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Category Archives: Current Affairs
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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How do you eat your chocolate bunny?
Ears first? The tail? Or feet first? According to this scientific report titled “Seasonality of auricular amputations in rabbits,” which was published in the latest issue of the journal Laryngoscope, most people prefer to start with the ears: “New research carried out online … Continue reading
Posted in Current Affairs, Questions Rarely Asked
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Class No. 11 (Is Facebook a monopoly?)
“But with … incredible growth came new problems.” –Ben Mezrich, The Accidental Billionaires, Ch. 22. In our next class, we will debate whether Facebook is an illegal monopoly. After all, Facebook is the most popular social network in the world … Continue reading
Posted in Current Affairs, Ethics, Law
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How much is Tom Brady’s jersey really worth?
Half a mil or $119.99? That is, should the value of Tom Brady’s stolen Super Bowl LI jersey be its replacement value, i.e. what it would cost his team to buy him a new #12 jersey ($119.99, plus tax, according to the … Continue reading
Posted in Current Affairs, Economics, Law, Probability
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The problem with so-called public meaning originalism
President Trump’s nomination of Judge Gorsuch to the Supreme Court has reignited the longstanding constitutional battle between defenders of the Living Constitution and backers of Originalism. (If this never-ending normative debate were a baseball game, it would be in the 57th … Continue reading
Posted in Academia, Bayesian Reasoning, Current Affairs, History, Law, Philosophy, Politics
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Taxing robots (Pigovian beard tax edition)
Microsoft billionaire and quasi-monopolist Bill Gates recently proposed that we should tax robots. But should we really tax robots? Why not impose a tax on every line of computer code instead? Or why not tax computer programmers who sport beards? … Continue reading
Posted in Current Affairs, Economics, Politics, Web/Tech
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Role reversal experiment: what if The Donald were a Donalda?
He would have still won the election! Maria Guadalupe and Joe Salvatore, professors at NYU, conducted an ingenious experiment (see video below) and found some surprising results. Happy International Women’s Day and be sure to check out the video below (hat tip: … Continue reading
Posted in Bayesian Reasoning, Current Affairs, History, Politics
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Caption this
Romney's popular vote share: 47%.Trump's popular vote share: 46.5%. pic.twitter.com/fidZaaSZj0 — Leigh Caldwell (@leighblue) November 30, 2016 I made the Trump/Romney photo black and white, and it looks like a Twilight Zone episode where a guy just made a foolish … Continue reading
Posted in Cooperation, Current Affairs, Deception, Politics
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Standing Rock Map
Does the standoff over the controversial Dakota Access Pipeline falsify the Coase Theorem? In any case, we think Ronald Coase’s analysis of property rights on page 25 of his contrarian but essentially correct 1959 FCC paper might be relevant to … Continue reading
Posted in Current Affairs, Economics, Law
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prior probability 