A Heaven Have To Happen

A Disaster Waiting to Happen

Suppose we organise a golf tournament in which 100 people play a round. Is the score of the tournament winner a reasonable estimate of his future scores? If the field consists of players of similar abilities, then the winner is likely to be one of the better players, but he will also have to be lucky on the day. The winner's score is likely to be above his personal average, for if he had not be...

From pigsties to hog heaven?

In the continuing transformation of U.S. agriculture, North Carolina finds itself on the front edge of change. Between 1989 and 1998, the number of hogs in the state's pork industry quintupled---and so has the amount of hog waste that must be disposed of. Now the state has engaged private and public resources in a rapid search for better ways for handling hog waste. A technology review panel ha...

On Causing Something to Happen in a Certain Way without Causing It to Happen*

We tend to identify events by when, where, and how they occur, i.e., by the time at which they occur, the spatial location at which they occur, and the manner in which they occur. But, in most cases, we also tend to conceive of the specific time, spatial location, and manner in which they occur as only accidental to them. For instance, we think that an explosion that occurred at noon could have...

Waiting for Determinism to Happen

Avian influenza--a pandemic waiting to happen?

Cross-species transmission of a highly pathogenic subtype of influenza A virus directly from birds to humans has raised many concerns. The radical methods of immune evasion and the possibility of human-to-human transmission as a result of gene reassortment between the human and avian viral subtypes pose an imminent threat of a global pandemic. The growing reservoir of circulating influenza amon...