Clik here to view.
Einstein and the Quantum
I just saw an ad (in Blackwell’s Books) for a book titled Einstein and the Quantum, with a text that began Einstein himself famously rejected quantum mechanics with his God does not play dice theory…...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Hippie science
There are two books I’ve read sort of recently, From Counterculture to Cyberculture by Fred Turner and How the Hippies Saved Physics by David Kaiser, that supplement each other as a picture of how...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The patron saint of cranks and charlatans
I can’t remember who it was who referred to Galileo that way. Ted Cruz, the right-wing US senator, presidential candidate, and one-time Ivy League super-elitist has invoked the protection of this saint...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Pope’s Shluchim
I’ve just been reading Amir Alexander’s book Infinitesimal, about the intellectual struggle over the concepts of infinitesimals and the continuum in mathematics and science (and theology) in the 17th...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Annie Get Your Prior
I was reading Sharon McGrayne’s wonderful popular (no, really!) book on the history of Bayesian statistics. At one point it is mentioned that George Box wrote a song for a departmental Christmas party...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Einstein and the Quantum
I just saw an ad (in Blackwell’s Books) for a book titled Einstein and the Quantum, with a text that began Einstein himself famously rejected quantum mechanics with his God does not play dice theory…...
View ArticleMontaigne on random controlled experiments
In the past I’ve read a few individual individual essays by Montaigne, but lately I’ve been really enjoying reading them systematically — partly listening to the English-language audiobook, partly...
View ArticleNeanderthal science
I just listened to all of a two-hour discussion between journalist Ezra Klein and professional atheist Sam Harris, about Harris’s defense of the right-wing policy entrepreneur (as Matthew Yglesias has...
View ArticleMission accomplished!
Reading Dava Sobel’s book on the women astronomers of the Harvard Observatory in the early 20th century, The Glass Universe, I was surprised to discover that the first Association to Aid Scientific...
View ArticleUV radiation and skin cancer — a history
If I had been asked when it first came to be understood that skin cancer is caused by exposure to the sun, I would have said probably the 1970s, maybe 1960s among cognoscenti, before it was well...
View ArticleBuddhist causal networks
A little-publicised development in statistics over the past two decades has been the admission of causality into respectable statistical discourse, spearheaded by the computer scientist Judea Pearl....
View ArticleEarly Trumpist medical treatments
And then I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in a minute. One minute! And is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside or almost a cleaning. Because you see it gets in...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The return of quota sampling
Everyone knows about the famous Dewey Defeats Truman headline fiasco, and that the Chicago Daily Tribune was inspired to its premature announcement by erroneous pre-election polls. But why were the...
View ArticleWomen of the Metropolis (algorithm)
I’ve always heard of the Metropolis algorithm having been invented for H-bomb calculations by Nicholas Metropolis and Edward Teller. But I was just looking at the original paper, and discovered that...
View ArticleBad intuitions about masking: Japan, 1933
Reading the gripping recent book by Uwe Wittstock on the activities of German writers and artists in the shock of February 1933, I just came across this passage from the little-known writer Hans...
View Article
