July 2015 – Page 2 – William M. Briggs

The Perfectibility of Man: Suicide of the West at 50

It's (past) time we examined James Burnham's under-appreciated classic Suicide of the West: An Essay on the Meaning and Destiny of Liberalism, a book written fifty years ago. Everybody should…

Philosophy Statistics

More Reasons Not To Use The Precautionary Principle: Update

All probability is conditional and we are always interested in some proposition, call it X. We want to know "the probability of X". Well, there is none: not ever. There…

Statistics

Stream: Attack Of The Black Swans From Outer Space!

Today's post is at The Stream: "Attack Of The Black Swans From Outer Space: Nassim Nicholas Taleb and his co-authors fail to show their precautionary principle provides any guidance in…

Book review Philosophy

There’s More Than Physics: A Review Of Nagel’s Mind and Cosmos. Guest Post by Bob Kurland

Kurland provides us with a succinct review of Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature is Almost Certainly False. This will ease us into the week with…

Philosophy SAMT

Summary Against Modern Thought: Can God Know Things That Aren’t?

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. Some simple…

Culture Fun

Climatology Isn’t The Only Thing Killing Science

I received this interesting email from reader Mike Nash that I thought would be of interest to all. Nash saw my piece in the Federalist yesterday and commented. Sorry but…

Culture Statistics

Climate Change Alarmists Appear Immunized Against Reality at The Federalist

Today's post is at The Federalist: "Climate Change Alarmists Appear Immunized Against Reality". So Ars Technica sent a young man who bills himself as an "educator" and hydrologist to the…

Culture Philosophy

Planned Parenthood Kills And Sells Victims’ Body Parts. Evil Doc Says Yum

https://twitter.com/mattstat/status/621065430996643840 It was bit of black comedy yesterday watching the reaction to the news that Planned Parenthood was selling the body parts of its victims. If you were (understandably) in…

Cary D Cotterman on Confirmation Bias In The Minneapolis ShootingJanuary 13, 2026
No news source is perfect. Fox openly owns their conservative point of view. NPR lies about being unbiased. Even with…
Tars Tarkas on Confirmation Bias In The Minneapolis ShootingJanuary 13, 2026
"(I have in the queue a story on confirmation bias of academic Experts that confirms my bias that academic Experts…
Stan on Confirmation Bias In The Minneapolis ShootingJanuary 13, 2026
Around 2013, I obtained all death certificate data from the state of California for the years 2000-2012. I posted on…
Briggs on Sports Betting Is An Excellent Way To Lose MoneyJanuary 13, 2026
Anon. I believe you'll find they are the same. I did a little shorthand by first taking the absolute value…
Anonymous on Sports Betting Is An Excellent Way To Lose MoneyJanuary 13, 2026
Errata: your moneyline formula should have (x - 100) in the denominator for -x.