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Author Archives: F. E. Guerra-Pujol
Class No. 14 (Mark Zuckerberg’s question)
What question keeps you up at night? By way of example, in the opening scene of the movie “The Social Network,” a fictional Mark Zuckerberg begins by asking, “How do you distinguish yourself in a population of people who all … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
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The art of recycling
Among many other beautiful things, ProtonPaperie of Merritt Island, Florida offers the coaster set pictured below, consisting of vintage ads from the 1908 Sears catalogue (via Etsy).
Posted in Art
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Visualization of the Cinema of Alfred Hitchcock
The piece pictured below, which was created by the graphic artist Dex, features Sir Alfred Hitchcock’s distinctive silhouette through a mix of typography and illustration. More works by Dex are available here.
Posted in Art
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Class No. 13 (The United Airlines Case)
Have you ever been bumped off a flight or received shabby service from a commercial airline carrier? In our next class, we will take a break from “The Social Network” in order to debate United’s fateful decision (see memes below) … Continue reading
Posted in Current Affairs, Ethics, Law
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The Empirical Economics Debate
In the 1930s and 1940s, academic economists were engaged in the so-called “socialist calculation debate,” a theoretical quarrel that was not fully resolved until the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. (Until then, some economists seriously believed that a … Continue reading
Posted in Academia, Economics, History, Questions Rarely Asked
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Starve the beast: let’s just repeal the 16th Amendment
Posted in Bayesian Reasoning, History, Law
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Which occupations are “robot-proof”?
Take the quiz here. (Hat tip: the amazing Tyler Cowen.)
Simple Rules (United Airlines edition)
We are big fans of Richard Epstein’s book Simple Rules for a Complex World (Harvard University Press, 1995) for many reasons. Consider aviation. In place of this convoluted academic analysis, we would advocate for the following simple rule: carriers may … Continue reading
Posted in Economics, Law
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Public Service Announcement: all chemical weapons are bad
Why are some chemical weapons like Napalm and Agent Orange okay to use (as long as the U.S. military uses them) but others off limits? If we are going to continue acting as the world’s policeman and all-around moral enforcer … Continue reading
Posted in Bayesian Reasoning
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Bad to worse (regime change edition)
1. 🇨🇺 Cuba: Fulgencio Batista (bad); Fidel Castro (way worse) 2. 🇮🇷 Iran: Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi (bad); Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini (way worse) 3. 🇻🇪 Venezuela: Rafael Caldera (bad); Hugo Chavez/Nicolas Maduro (way worse) 4. 🇮🇶 Iraq: Saddam Hussein (bad); … Continue reading
Posted in Bayesian Reasoning
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prior probability 