2015 – Page 3 – William M. Briggs

Stream: December 12, 2015: The Day Science Died. #COP21

Today's post is at The Stream: "December 12, 2015: The Day Science Died. #COP21". President Hollande of France slid to the microphone, and, with great Gallic aplomb, announced December 12th,…

Philosophy SAMT

Summary Against Modern Thought: On God’s Happiness

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. We finish…

Book review Culture

The Theology of Science-fiction: Some SF “Gospels”—guest post by Bob Kurland

Be sure to visit Bob's main site, Reflections of a Catholic Scientist. Note: this article originally during Lent, 2015. ...when I was not prey to the temptations of this world,…

Culture Statistics

FiveThirtyEight Weighs In With Some Odd Affirmative Action Statistics

FiveThirtyEight ran the piece "Here's What Happens When You Ban Affirmative Action In College Admissions" that ran some dicey stats. Affirmative Action is, as all know, the practice of rewarding…

Culture Philosophy

I Self-Identify As The Yak King

Person I know was attending recently a mandatory training session at a well known university. Session was led by trainers not themselves employees of the university, folks who self-identified as…

Culture Statistics

Odds That a Panel Would ‘Randomly’ Be All Men?

There are no such thing as the "odds" a panel would be "randomly" all men. Yet The Atlantic thinks there could be, and so does a fellow named Greg Martin,…

Culture

Stream: Climate Circus, Climate Clowns at #COP21

Update Tell me: are we getting sick of discussing this topic, or what? It seems that, as is sane and rational, most of us would rather move on to something…

Culture

Memo to GOP Presidential Hopefuls (Who Aren’t Named Trump). Guest Post by The BB

Mr Editor says: note the name of the author. Dear GOP Presidential Hopeful, You are probably wondering why your campaign isn't turning out as well as you expected. Up to…

McChuck on The Hubris Of Experts: NIH EditionJune 17, 2025
Remember, kids, a scientist is nothing more than an academic with a lab coat. Academics are people who have been…
NLR on The Hubris Of Experts: NIH EditionJune 17, 2025
Certainly, the science-industrial-government-university complex is corrupt. The criticism of it is all warranted. But even worse than expensive and frivolous…
Briggs on The Mathematics Of Conspiracy Theories. Part 1: Black Eye Club ExampleJune 16, 2025
Paul, You're right. It sucked. I'm redoing. JH, Very well. Construct for us a model that does not do what…
Paul murphy on The Mathematics Of Conspiracy Theories. Part 1: Black Eye Club ExampleJune 16, 2025
Ok, maybe I need more coffee but I found that very confusing - too much I think that you think…
JH on The Mathematics Of Conspiracy Theories. Part 1: Black Eye Club ExampleJune 16, 2025
The mathematical result from the Di Finetti's 0-1 Representation Theorem discussed here tells us, under the assumption of exchangeability (which…