Posted inFun
We Gave Them The Willies
I have returned from my conference where I gave a half-stunned audience my lecture The Top Six Fallacies In Statistics. But though I labored long and hard, it wasn't all…
The Most Depressing Picture Of The Year
Ladies and gentlemen, the most depressing picture of the year. Yes, worse than the pic of Joe Biden bringing muffins to lock-ins during the government shutdown. These, my dear readers,…
Posted inStatistics
Vitamin D And Cancer
This is our second big week focusing on colorectual cancer. Three weeks makes a streak. We'll see. Our paper is Mapping Vitamin D Deficiency, Breast Cancer, and Colorectal Cancer by…
Posted inCulture Philosophy
Tea Partiers Know As Much Science As Enlightened Lefties?
So this Dan Kahan, Yale prof of something-or-other, devised himself a science quiz. "The center of the Earth is very hot [true/false]." That sort of thing. He gave the quiz's…
The Night Fred Astaire Shot Up Broadway
From hellion Fred Astair's autobiography Steps In Time, Harper & Row, New York, 1981 edition, p. 34. The year was about 1910 [emphasis mine]: I'll always remember Dick Moeller shooting…
Posted inCulture Philosophy
Anti-Human Leader: Every Woman, Everywhere, Could Have Contraception
"Isn't she pretty. What's her name?" "Susan. After my grandmother." "Have you had her fixed yet?" Don't fret! That's a conversation you won't be hearing. Because why? Because, of course,…
Posted inStatistics
Blasphemy Rights Day Twitter Contest Winners
In an effort to unleash the inner juvenile inside all of us, the Center for Free Inquiry held the "Blasphemy Rights Day 2013 Twitter Contest." They called this "an initiative…
Posted inCulture Philosophy
Pascal & Barzun On Scientism
Blaise Pascal was a man smarter than I and smarter than thou. He was a scientist, mathematician, probabilist, and was deeply, deeply Catholic. Pascal as scientist warned against trusting science…