October 2011 – Page 4 – William M. Briggs

Why Yom Kippur Is Sacred To This Priest — Guest Post by Father Brian Jordan

Father Brian Jordan is a Roman Catholic priest, a Franciscan formerly of St. Francis of Assisi Church in New York City, where everybody, just everybody, knows him. He does most…

Philosophy Statistics

Robert Heinlein And Evolving Probabilities

Writer Stephen Dawson, a long-time participant at this blog, wrote and asked the following: In his The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Robert Heinlein had his intelligent computer calculate the…

Statistics

The Implications Of Yesterday’s Global Warming Post

There was nothing in the world wrong with my scientific paper "Global Warming Increases Disastrous Music: A Scientific Paper." Nothing, that is, that isn't wrong with any paper which seeks,…

Statistics

Global Warming Increases Disastrous Music: A Scientific Paper

A scientific paper in a grand tradition (notice the scientific formatting and use of p-values): the custom is to read only the Abstract; only the brave and bored should venture…

Culture Philosophy Statistics

Are Humans As Violent As In The Good Old Days?

If we had records of massacres as we have meteorological records, don't you think we might discover their internal laws, after several centuries of observation? --- Joseph de Maistre. There…

Book review

America’s Security and Taiwan’s Freedom — Guest Post by June Teufel Dreyer

We return to a topic which is of more importance than you want it to be: the possibility of Chinese belligerence. June Teufel Dreyer is a political science professor at…

Brian (bulaoren) on What Are The Chances Of All These Scientists Dying, Killed, Or Going Missing?April 20, 2026
@Cary Motorcycle accident? No, that was due to covid.
Cary D Cotterman on What Are The Chances Of All These Scientists Dying, Killed, Or Going Missing?April 20, 2026
In the mid '70s I was the janitor at Cal Tech's Kerkhoff Marine Laboratory, where they studied the effects of…
Brian (bulaoren) on What Are The Chances Of All These Scientists Dying, Killed, Or Going Missing?April 20, 2026
I'm waiting for members of the California Coastal Commission to start disappearing.
Bill Hankel on What Are The Chances Of All These Scientists Dying, Killed, Or Going Missing?April 20, 2026
Thank you for your application of common sense (and math!) to this issue. I have never been a conspiracy theorist,…
Lucy Tucker on What Are The Chances Of All These Scientists Dying, Killed, Or Going Missing?April 20, 2026
You’re the best?????