Book review – Page 8 – William M. Briggs

Uncertainty: The Soul of Models, Probability & Statistics. Chapter Abstracts

This post originally appeared right before the Uncertainty did. Now that we're 1.5 years out, it's time for a re-post. Buy it now, but it today, and buy it again…

Take Burnham’s Test To See If You’re A Progressive: <em>Suicide of the West</em> at 50

Book review Culture

Take Burnham’s Test To See If You’re A Progressive: Suicide of the West at 50

This classic column appeared in July 2015. Besides some editing, I would now change 'liberal' to 'progressive', which I have done in the title. I made no other change. See…

Book review Culture

Glubb Pasha’s Experiences With American Democracy

[The image above flashed by on the interwebs, and it struck me as humorously apt, though I can't now recall where I first saw it. If the picture has any…

Book review Philosophy

Why Not Only Us? Men Speak, Animals Make Noise

A review of the book Why Only Us: Language and Evolution by Robert Berwick and Noam Chomsky. Everybody knows, or used to know, that only men speak. Animals make noise,…

Book review Statistics

Math: Old, New, and Equalitarian — A Review

I have a new paper out in Academic Questions, a review, "Math: Old, New, and Equalitarian." Springer is charging a mere pittance for viewing it. Only $39.95. But I think…

Book review Philosophy

The Devil’s Delusion: Atheism and its Scientific Pretensions by David Berlinski

A modified version of this article ran 14 April 2008. There are a recent number of books seeking to either demonstrate, scientifically, that God does not exist, or to show…

Book review

Sean Carroll’s “The Big Picture” Reviewed: Why “Poetic Naturalism” is an Oxymoron — Guest Post by Bob Kurland

Another version of this article first appeared at Kurland's site. Scientism, the belief that science can explain everything about the world and ourselves, is a religion, although not formally expressed…

Book review

Austin Ruse’s ‘Fake Science: Exposing the Left’s Skewed Statistics, Fuzzy Facts, and Dodgy Data’

Austin Ruse kindly sent me a copy of his new Fake Science: Exposing the Left's Skewed Statistics, Fuzzy Facts, and Dodgy Data, a book readers of this blog will take…

John Pate on Irrational Rationalists: Effective Altruists & The Planet of the AntsSeptember 28, 2026
We should all re-read our Ted Kaczynski materials. A man ahead of his time.
Brian (bulaoren) on Irrational Rationalists: Effective Altruists & The Planet of the AntsSeptember 28, 2026
While in university, I took a class called "Symbolic Logic". Logic was then taught through the Philosophy department, which was…
Cary Cotterman on Irrational Rationalists: Effective Altruists & The Planet of the AntsSeptember 28, 2026
Any giant ant who will eat Joan Collins is worth at least his weight in humans.
McChuck on Irrational Rationalists: Effective Altruists & The Planet of the AntsSeptember 28, 2026
Those who lack faith (belief) in God will believe in anything. Atheism is, itself, a religion, and as such under…
NLR on Irrational Rationalists: Effective Altruists & The Planet of the AntsSeptember 28, 2026
If the problem was simply that they were logical but not reasonable, that would not be great. But the real…