According to this recent essay in The Atlantic authored by J. Michael Luttig (a former federal judge) and Laurence H. Tribe (a retired law professor), the former commander-in-chief is a “treasonous president” who is prohibited from federal office under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment (quoted in full below). Really? Although Judge Luttig and Professor Tribe have received a lot of liberal media attention lately, having taught constitutional law for 20+ years I am highly skeptical of their Trumpian conclusion. Nevertheless, as a public service I will go ahead and review their 30-paragraph polemic in my next post.
Manu Chao is a French-Spanish artist who sings in French, Spanish, English, Italian, Arabic, Catalan, Galician, Portuguese, Greek, and occasionally in other languages. Below are two of my favorite Manu Chao musical compositions: Me Gustas Tu and Bongo Bong.
What a time to be alive! A huge shout out to my colleagues Alex Tabarrok and Tyler Cowen (pictured below), two of the most prolific bloggers on the planet. Among other things, their Marginal Revolution blog has not only been up and running without interruption since 23 August 2003 (see here and here); it has also been my faithful intellectual companion since 2007, when I first discovered their eclectic blog. Literally, not a day goes by that I don’t read their sundry daily posts, take note of their book and article recommendations, or peruse through their assorted links.
Happy Paris Liberation Day! On this day in 1944 the Allies liberate Paris from the Nazis, and on this day 24 years later (1968) yours truly is born in Los Angeles, California.
A forthcoming law review article on the Constitution’s “disqualification clause” (see here) and various articles in the new symposium issue of the Journal of Free Speech Law on Artificial Intelligence and Speech.
Remember Merlin Mann, the evil mastermind who in the early 2000s conceived of a new method of psychological torture called “Inbox Zero“. Alas, this ascetic concept can mean different things to different people. Does it mean an inbox totally devoid of any emails (i.e. a literal definition), or does it just refer to zero unread emails (see here, for example, for a defense of this more flexible interpretation of the Inbox Zero concept)? However you interpret the meaning of Inbox Zero, what if we could just eliminate email altogether?
With the fall semester now upon us (I begin teaching today! — but I cannot comprehend why college courses in the southeast have to begin in hot and humid August; does it have anything to do with college football?), I am posting the first half of my new A.I.-themed syllabus under the fold below:
This summer, I made substantial revisions to my paper on “Outer Space Auctions“, and I just posted my revised work to SSRN (see here). Among other things, a Canadian colleague had recently brought to my attention an important international organization called the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), which plays a pivotal role in the allocation of property rights in outer space; see here, for example. Specifically, once the FCC has parceled out an orbit for a satellite, it must then submit its proposed orbit and radio-frequency allocations to the ITU in accordance with the provisions of the international treaty governing the use of radio frequencies, called the Radio Regulations. The ITU not only allocates radio frequencies for every radio-transmitting or radio-receiving satellite in outer space; it also records these allocations in a Master International Frequency Register or MIFR. In addition to allocating radio frequencies in outer space, the ITU also allocates orbital positions for GEO satellites as well as orbital characteristics for non-geostationary satellites in order to avoid signal interference among different satellites in outer space as well as “guarantee equitable access to spectrum and orbital resources for each country.” So, why not auction off those orbits instead of giving them away for free?
prior probability 