December 2016 – Page 3 – William M. Briggs

Eastern Michigan To Install Zampolit In Every Classroom To Maintain Ideological Purity

Maintaining ideological purity requires constant vigilance. The Commissars in the old Union of Soviet Socialist Republics knew this well. This is why they assigned zampolit, or political officers, to serve…

Statistics

Don’t Use Statistical Models (When You Don’t Have To. Which Is Nearly Always)

Today, a convincing argument proving the current practice of probability and statistics is mostly wrong, or wrong-headed. The picture above does---and does not---show herbicide use in several countries by year…

Culture Statistics

Science Asks: Why Are Angry Atheists Annoying?

What's more annoying than an atheist who harangues passersby about "rationality"? Easy answer: a scientist who announces a discovery about human behavior that was known by everybody since Adam. Our…

Philosophy SAMT

Summary Against Modern Thought: More On The Possible Intellect

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're still…

Philosophy

Vatican Analyzes The Difference Between Humans And Robots

Soon a robot will ask you if you want fries with that. Computer screens already do, in some locales. How does that make you feel? Hungry? That could be taken…

Statistics

Scientific People Understand Reality Less, New Research Didn’t Study

Headline: Religious people understand the world less, study suggests, which derives from the peer-reviewed paper "Does Poor Understanding of Physical World Predict Religious and Paranormal Beliefs?" in Applied Cognitive Psychology…

Culture

Seventy-Five Years After Pearl Harbor

Holy moly. Shinzo Abe is going to visit Pearl Harbor "on Dec. 26-27 to pray for the dead". Who saw that coming? According to the linked report: "We must never…

Culture Philosophy

Do I Exist?(Does Russia) Part II — Guest Post by Ianto Watt

Read Part I here. So God has already acted. There is no potentiality left in Him, as Aquinas would say. After all, He's already done everything. There's nothing left to…

John Pate on Academics Call For The Killing Of Babies In “After-Birth” AbortionsSeptember 30, 2026
You cannot use reason on people whose arguments are not based on reason. That's why we invented guns.
Leonard on Academics Call For The Killing Of Babies In “After-Birth” AbortionsSeptember 30, 2026
I could have anthopic give me a summary of Mein Kampf written as a scientific paper and it would probably…
spetzer86 on Academics Call For The Killing Of Babies In “After-Birth” AbortionsSeptember 30, 2026
If an event can happen that transitions a baby into a human, could not a similar event occur that would…
Brian (bulaoren) on Academics Call For The Killing Of Babies In “After-Birth” AbortionsSeptember 30, 2026
That fatalistic sense of humor will come in handy today.
Brian (bulaoren) on Academics Call For The Killing Of Babies In “After-Birth” AbortionsSeptember 30, 2026
My old friend Nat Plotkin, had a joke about the Jewish position on abortion; "The fetus becomes a human being…