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Author Archives: F. E. Guerra-Pujol
Game of Chicken (cult classic edition)
Can we model politics, litigation, and other forms of competition as games of chicken?
Prisoner’s dilemma T-shirts
Which one should we get?
Where did all the video stores go?
Joseph Schumpeter is famous among historians for his “creative destruction” theory of modern capitalism. How about a “destructive creation” theory of art? Via kottke, an artist pretending to be a Parisian hipster named “Stan”–who only watches modern films and TV series on … Continue reading
Why isn’t April 9 a National Holiday?
On this day (April 9) in 1865, Confederate General Robert E. Lee formally surrendered to Union General Ulysses S. Grant after the remnants of Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia were decisively defeated at the Battle of Appomattox Court House by … Continue reading
Model of North American politics (2 x 2 matrix edition)
This simple model might be wrong, but is it useful? (Via Paul Krugman.)
Agricultural water consumption
“Almonds are especially thirsty in the southern San Joaquin. But there’s a lucrative overseas market for them so growers have been planting more and more trees. Basically, one almond requires a gallon of water to produce,” writes L.A. Times columnist George Skelton. … Continue reading
“In chess. First move. E4 or D4. Which is better?”
This is one of the quirky questions the hyper-productive blogger and cultural economist Tyler Cowen posed to Peter Thiel recently. Here is Thiel’s reply (the aside in brackets was added by us): THIEL: It’s probably the case that D4 is marginally … Continue reading
Copyright infringement?
J’s on your feet? Via Darren Rovell: A photographer by the name of Jacobus Rentmeester is suing Nike for copyright infringement (you can read more about this case here), alleging that his picture of Michael Jordan (left) was changed slightly by Nike … Continue reading
Optimal video length for student engagement is six minutes …
According to this report by Philip Guo, Juho Kim, and Rob Rubin, who studied student engagement with online courses offered by the edX consortium (edX’s Wikipedia here). Guo, Kim, and Rubin took all 862 educational videos from four edX courses offered in the fall of 2012 … Continue reading
prior probability 