prior probability

• 16 September 1810: Mexican Independence Day (see also here).
• 17 September 1787: Constitution Day (USA).
• 18-20 September 1863: The Battle of Chickamauga between Confederate and Union forces. (Among other things, this battle produces the second-highest amount of civil war casualties apart from Gettysburg.)

That is the subject of the podcast episode below. (For my part, it sure looks that way to me!)

File under: “Bayesian updating” (look it up!).

Wow! This 45-minute music-mix magically popped up into my YouTube homepage (thank you evil Google algorithms), and I loved every second of it!

That is the title of this suspenseful short story by my fellow writer and friend Luanne Castle. Her one-paragraph story, which was published in the Bright Flash Literary Review, belongs to a new literary genre known as “micro-fiction” or “flash fiction”; for more information about this genre or the BFLR, check out their website. Also, be sure to check out Luanne Castle’s eclectic literary blog “Poetry and Other Words (and cats!)“.

That is the title of this report by Stephanie Pappas for Scientific American. (Hat tip: Brian Leiter.) In brief, the word “unless” in Netwon’s First Law (see, for example, the infographic below) should really read “except insofar”; otherwise, the first law simply states a circular tautology!

FYI: This “discovery” (“clarification” would be a better word) was made Daniel Hoek, who teaches philosophy at Virginia Tech. Here is his formal paper (PDF), published in the journal Philosophy of Science, where Professor Hoek explains his discovery of the mistranslation of Newton’s First Law: “Forced Changes Only: A New Take on the Law of Inertia“.

My colleague and friend Peter J. Boettke explores this question in his survey essay for The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy, Politics, and Economics (2022), pp. 267-275, which is available here (for free!) via SSRN. Among other things, Professor Boettke explains why what we call “capitalism” (voluntary exchange based on property rights and the enforcement of contracts) should really be called “socialism”!

For my part, I have been conducting some new research on two aspects of Adam Smith’s biography (his decision to abandon his studies at Balliol College in the summer of 1746 and his final departure from Paris in the fall of 1766) that I hope to present at the upcoming annual meeting of the International Adam Smith Society at Waseda University in Tokyo in March of 2024. I will share additional details about my ongoing research projects in the days and weeks ahead.

Who shot JFK? For my part, I have never believed the far-fetched single-bullet theory proposed by the Warren Commission, so a spate of stories published during the past few days and calling into question the government’s version of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy has grabbed my full attention. These various reports (see links below) are based on the forthcoming book The Final Witness (scheduled to be released next month; see here), which contains new testimony by Paul Landis, one of the Secret Service agents who was just a few feet away from JFK when he was shot in Dallas on 22 November 1963.

1. “JFK Secret Service agent questions assassination theory” (via Axios).
2. “JFK assassination witness questions whether shooter acted alone“, by Ramon Antonio Vargas (via The Guardian).
3. “JFK assassination witness breaks his silence and raises new questions“, by Peter Baker (via the NY Times).
4. “A new JFK assassination revelation could upend the long-held ‘lone gunman’ theory”, by James Robenalt (via Vanity Fair).
5. “Secret Service agent who was with JFK on day of his assassination breaks silence with claim that blows up the ‘magic bullet’ theory and suggests there was more than one shooter“, by Keith Griffith (via the Daily Mail).

For the record, via Wikipedia, here is a compilation of 21 other non-fiction books about the JFK assassination. Also, via JSTOR, here is a review of seven additional JFK assassination books.