prior probability

While I was out of town I proofread and made substantial revisions to both of my Adam Smith works-in-progress: Die Adam Smith Probleme and The Balliol College Conspiracy. Enjoy!

What is the opposite of Death by PowerPoint? The tweet pictured below by Gokul Rajaram, which is worth clicking on and reading in full, describes former Google CEO Eric Schmidt’s unconventional but thought-provoking approach to PowerPoint: eliminate the use of words!

Today marks the end of my travels … for now! I will be visiting the University of Glasgow in Scotland (the fourth-oldest university in the English-speaking world) and la Universidad del Desarrollo (UDD) in Chile in a few weeks!

On this day (8 May) in 1794, the father of modern chemistry Antoine Lavoisier, along with 27 co-defendants, are tried, convicted, and put to death by a revolutionary tribunal in Paris. According to a popular legend, the appeal to spare the French chemist’s life so that he could continue his experiments was cut short by the judge in his case, Jean-Baptiste Coffinhal: “The Republic needs neither scholars nor chemists; the course of justice cannot be delayed.” (The judge himself would be executed less than three months later.)

I heard this beautiful ballad–the song “Smile” by Nigerian artist Wizkid–for the first time somewhere in Sin City. Thanks Shazam!

I met the love of my life on the 64th anniversary of Paris Liberation Day (25 August 2009; my birthday!), and today, Cinco de Mayo, is our wedding anniversary! Alas, I don’t have a picture from that fateful day, so this one from ten years later will have to do.

That is the title of my latest work in progress, which I wrote up these last few days during my stay at my college alma mater UCSB (the campus is pictured below) and which I just posted to SSRN (see here). Below is the abstract of my paper:

“Did Adam Smith’s academic superiors at Balliol College, Oxford conspire to search his private rooms, and was the young scholar then reprimanded by them for the heresy of reading David Hume? Although this 18th-century conspiracy story has been retold many times, its veracity has never been corroborated. This paper thus contributes to the Adam Smith literature in three ways: by assembling in one place the original reports of the Oxford conspiracy, by showing how this oft-told Adam Smith conspiracy story has evolved over the years, and by subjecting these accounts to lawyerly scrutiny.”

Enjoy!