Compromise and Conceit
Infernal adventuring…
Category: Science
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In my recent post on the growth of anti-vaccination ideology in the Republican party I described the process by which I think it’s possible that anti-vaccination politics has got a hold on some prominent republicans, entering through the back door of sexual “morality” (pardon the pun) and gaining prominence through the influence of group dynamics…
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In preparation for a post on the political origins of anti-vaccination ideology, I want to make a point about the way that the ordinary public interact with scientists. My last post on anti-vax and Republicans has been linked to by a climate change blog, and on that blog one of the commenters is making big…
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The recent outbreak of measles in the USA has brought on an epidemic of Republican anti-science blathering, this time focused on vaccination. First we had Chris Christie saying measles vaccination should be optional, then Rand Paul putting his libertarian principles where his mouth is and declaring all Americans should be free to give each other…
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Following up on yesterday’s post about the new Greek finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis, today I investigated his involvement in computer game economics a little more. I found this article by Brad Plumer, written for the Washington Post in 2012, which describes the growing role of economists in computer gaming. Modern online multiplayer computer games are…
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Nature has just published an assessment of the location and accessibility of all the world’s known carbon fuel reserves (coal, oil and gas), and its conclusion is striking: 80% of coal, 50% of oil and 33% of gas need to be classified as unburnable if the earth is to remain within the 2C “guard rail”…
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Tonight I was having dinner at kushi no kura in Shinjuku with a friend, and we noticed the mysterious oddity of shinshu salmon on the menu. For those of you unfamiliar with the vagaries of Japanese food culture [1], shinshu is an area of inland Japan roughly encompassing the Prefecture of Nagano, and its snowy…
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I’ve recently been building a fairly complex series of Bayesian spatial regression models in BUGS, and thought I’d share some tips based on hard won experience with the models. The various BUGS packages have the most cryptic and incoherent error messages of any stats software I have ever worked with, and although various Bayesian boosters…
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I have a dataset of about 40 million records covering rare events over a 30 year period, with about 600,000 events in total. The data are clustered in about 50 regions, and in the latter years of the file there are only about 4000 events a year (they increase in frequency in the early years).…
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I’ve complained before about the reliability and quality of the open source statistics package, R. Sometimes I get pushback, with people suggesting that I just don’t understand what R is trying to do, or that there is an obvious way to do things differently that answers my complaints – that R is idiosyncratic but generally…
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I have been playing Snoopy Drops (スヌーピー・ドロップス), which is a cute variant of Candy Crush Saga with a deep story (Snoopy is seeking Bell). It has all the same essential properties, and a fiendishly addictive bent to it, along with a pay-for-boostups routine that must surely make it a huge money-spinner. I guess Candy Crush…
Compromise and Conceit 