Posted inCulture Philosophy
Government To Issue Baby Licenses
Regular readers will recall that I am a (self-appointed) bioethicist, a post I take on not because I need the work, but because the professionals are making such a hash…
Posted inFun
What Should Artists Do About Global Warming Contest
Picture shows artist Sarah Cameron Sunde, who stood in San Francisco Bay on Friday Aug. 15, 2014, "for a full cycle of tides, a more-than 13-hour process." A more than…
Posted inPhilosophy
Philosophic Issues in Cosmology VI: Anthropic Coincidences—Guest Post by Bob Kurland
Bob Kurland is a retired, cranky, old physicist, and convert to Catholicism. He shows that there is no contradiction between what science tells us about the world and our Catholic…
Posted inStatistics
Ask A Scientific Ethicist: Baby Making, Auto Mishap, ISIS Attacks
This was supposed to run this morning. No idea why it didn't. This week, three letters from concerned readers. Too many babies Dear Scientific Ethicist, Hopefully this subject matter isn't…
Posted inStatistics
It Makes No Sense To Say You’re More Likely To Die Of Bee Sting Than Shark Bite
The National Journal says: "The odds of being killed by a shark are about 1 in 3.7 million. The odds of being killed by a sting from a bee, wasp,…
Posted inStatistics
Decline Of Participation In Religious Rituals With Improved Sanitation
Answer me this. Earl at the end of the bar, on his sixth or seventh, tells listeners just what's wrong with America's science policy. His words receive knowing nods from…
Posted inPhilosophy Statistics
Comments On Dawid’s Prequential Probability
Phil Dawid is a brilliant mathematical statistician who introduced (in 1984) the theory of prequential probability1 to describe a new-ish way of doing statistics. We ought to understand this theory.…
Posted inPhilosophy Statistics
Explanation Vs Prediction
Introduction There isn't as much space between explanation and prediction as you'd think; both are had from the same elements of the problem at hand. Here's how it all works.…