I don’t think I have much of a chance here, not because of the judging—I’d trust Brooks and Paxman to recognize good writing—but because the competition includes some heavy hitters, including Dan Davies with a meta-blog-post called The Verjus Manifesto, Sara Paretsky on The Detective As Speech, and Charles Pierce with . . . well, […] The post “David Brooks And Jeremy Paxman To Judge The Golden Giraffes” appeared first…
I was googling *back of the envelope* for a recent post and I came across these lecture notes by Victor Weisskopf from 1969. I can no longer really follow this sort of thing—I really really wish this had been my textbook back when I was studying physics. If they’d taught us this stuff, I might’ve […] The post Don’t miss this one: “Modern Physics from an Elementary Point of View”…
In this NYT interview, Philip “Stanford Prison Experiment” Zimbardo gives his list: 1. “Madame Curie,” 1943 2. “The Seven-Per-Cent Solution,” 1976 3. “Awakenings,” 1990 4. “The Insider,” 1999 5. “The Imitation Game,” 2014. Not a very impressive list. But that’s the point, I guess: there haven’t been many good movies about scientists. I was racking […] The post Top 5 movies about scientists appeared first on Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference,…
OK, explain to me this email: God day, How are you? My name is **. I came across your contact email at the University of Cyprus, Department of Economics. I seek for a private Economics teacher for my Daughter. I would like to know if you would be available for job. If you would be […] The post Annals of Spam appeared first on Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social…
Chris Gittins recommends the book, “The Boy Who Loved Math: The Improbable Life of Paul Erdos,” by Deborah Heiligman. Gittins reports: We read it with our soon-to-be-first-grader this evening. She liked it and so did we. I knew a little about Erdos but the book probably quadrupled my knowledge. Thought it might be of interest […] The post Erdos bio for kids appeared first on Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and…
I actually read this a couple months ago after Bob recommended it to me. I don’t know why I did this, given that the last book Bob recommended to me, I hated, but in this case I made a good choice. The Martian was excellent and was indeed hard to set down. Recently I’ve been […] The post Review of The Martian appeared first on Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and…
We recently discussed an article by Isabel Scott and Nicholas Pound entitled, “Menstrual Cycle Phase Does Not Predict Political Conservatism,” in which Scott and Pound definitively shot down some research that was so ridiculous it never even deserved the dignity of being shot down. The trouble is, the original article, “The Fluctuating Female Vote: Politics, […] The post Being polite vs. saying what we really think appeared first on Statistical…
A few weeks ago I picked up a paperback of stories by Irwin Shaw, printed in the late 1950s. I love these little pocket books—but this one was a bit too disposable: after about 50 pages the spine gave out and the pages started to fall out, which was a bit irritating because then I […] The post Irwin Shaw: “I might mistrust intellectuals, but I’d mistrust nonintellectuals even more.”…
Are there any others? The post Harry S. Truman, Jesus H. Christ, Roy G. Biv appeared first on Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science.
Don’t get me wrong, I think Thomas Mallon is great. But what was he thinking when he wrote this: I know the New Yorker doesn’t do fact-checking anymore, but still. The funny thing is, Malzberg has similarities with Mailer both in style and subject matter. I’m guessing that in his statement Mallon is trying to […] The post This sentence by Thomas Mallon would make Barry N. Malzberg spin in…
