Posted inCulture
Mark Zuckerberg Dresses Like A Bum
Why I am writing about this, what might seem to you, not-too-pressing subject? The answer is discovered below. Before the reveal, an example of an ad hominem fallacy: "Facebook is…
Posted inPhilosophy
On The Truth And Knowing Why
Guy walks up to you in the street and says, "If f is some continuous function on the closed interval a to b, and if you take the definite integral…
Posted inStatistics
Exposure To Fracking Reduces Low-Birth-Weight Babies
Shouldn't a peer-reviewed paper which purports to tie chemicals produced in the manufacture of natural gas (fracking etc.) to birth defects actually measure exposure (of fetus carriers, i.e. "mothers") to…
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 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 inCulture Philosophy
Gibbon (And O’Brian) On Too Many Lawyers
This is Gibbon, quoted in Patrick O'Brian's The Reverse of the Medal by the character Dr Stephen Maturin, who then speaks: '"It is dangerous to entrust the conduct of nations…
Posted inStatistics
The Letter The Lancet Wouldn’t Publish
Here's the title of a big new peer-reviewed paper in The Lancet: Effects of long-term exposure to air pollution on natural-cause mortality: an analysis of 22 European cohorts within the…
Posted inPhilosophy SAMT
Summary Against Modern Thought: Non-existence Of Infinite Causal Chains
See the first post in this series for an explanation and guide of our tour of Summa Contra Gentiles. Previous post. Here's what was proved so far: (1) that some…