prior probability

Or to be more precise, what did Osama bin Laden’s evil 9/11 attack and George Bush’s knee-jerk “war on terror” response to this attack accomplish? I am tempted to say absolutely nothing, except lost lives, two pointless wars, and billions of wasted hours in security lines, so I asked Google Gemini this very question. Below the fold is the AI’s automated response to my query:

Charlie Kirk was a prominent pro-MAGA activist, author, and media personality who co-founded Turning Point USA, a conservative campus organization. Live updates regarding this brazen political assassination are available here via BBC News as I do not trust the mainstrain media in the U.S.

Update: This op-ed/eulogy by Ezra Klein is worth reading.

Update #2 (12 Sept.): Now that we know who the suspect is, my next questions are: did he act alone, and how could his own father turn him in?

Legally speaking, who should have the property right to the baseball in the film clip below: (A) the lady who was standing right in front of the ball and was just about to grab it, or (B) the man who ran across an entire row of seats and grabbed the ball the first? Most people have been siding with the dad, but when I first saw the video I thought the woman was right to be upset because the ball was heading right toward her. I therefore think it’s totally unfair to call her the “Philly Karen,” let alone try to get her fired from her job. P.S.: I have blogged about the case of Pierson v. Post before (see here).

That is the title of a splendid little stage play by the Cuban-American playwright Nilo Cruz. The play is set in a family-owned cigar factory in Ybor City, Tampa, in the early 20th century. As the hot and humid immigrant workers toil away hand rolling cigars, a “lector” entertains them by reading Leo Tolstoy’s novel Anna Karenina, causing the characters’ lives and relationships to spin out of control. Shout out to my wife Sydjia for taking me to see Anna in the Tropics on Sunday afternoon.

I discovered this catchy K-pop song (via Shazam) at my university campus Starbucks on Friday morning:

That is the title of this provocative op-ed by Harvard law professor Adrian Vermeule. Below is an excerpt:

The issue of defying court orders is still with us — but it has taken a twist. Now the defiance is coming from inside the judicial branch itself, in the form of a lower-court mutiny against the Supreme Court. District Court judges, and in some cases even appellate courts, have either defied orders of the court outright or engaged in malicious compliance and evasion of those orders, in transparent bad faith.

Wait, what?! Judges are playing politics? To quote Captain Renault, “I’m shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!” If the courts have the power to review the illegal or extra-constitutional acts of Congress and the president, who reviews the judges? File under: rule of law for thee but not for me!

A jury in Tallahassee, Florida, has found Donna Adelson, the Miami Beach mother of unindicted co-conspirator Wendi Adelson, guilty of first-degree murder, conspiracy, and solicitation in the murder-for-hire of FSU law professor Dan Markel.

Below is the epilogue to my forthcoming survey of open Adam Smith problems with Salim Rashid (footnotes are below the fold):

“We conclude our work with, perhaps, the most difficult and contested open questions of all: who was Adam Smith, really? How should he be remembered? What is his true legacy? Are his ideas and writings still relevant today? For our part, given Smith’s many foundational contributions to the fields of moral philosophy and political economy, we are tempted to see Smith as the world’s first (and perhaps only) moral economist.[1] But the deeper we dig into Smith’s life and work, the more surprises and contradictions we continue to find: college dropout (but why did he drop out?), freelance lecturer (but where are those lectures?), absent-minded college professor (was he really absent-minded or was it just an act?), competent university administrator (how did Smith juggle his teaching and administrative duties?), jurisprude and doctor of law (yet he never practiced law, did he? [*]), advisor to statesmen (yet his advice was never taken, was it?), tourist and tutor (but why give up his professorship?), solitary author (but how much of his Wealth of Nations did he borrow and how much did he steal?), and customs officer (cognitive dissonance, anyone?). Doctor Smith was and did many things (all of which pose many more questions than answers).

“At the same time, we have a nagging suspicion that none of these various pigeonholes or sundry labels truly capture the many-sidedness of Adam Smith. We therefore conclude with the following conjecture: what if we have been getting Smith and his legacy completely wrong all along? After all, although Adam Smith is credited with creating an entirely new discipline,[2] his writings extend far beyond political economy and moral philosophy, for he thought about and contributed fresh insights to such diverse fields as education, history, law, linguistics, logic, politics, religion, rhetoric, taxation, and the arts.[3] Given this multiplicity of intellectual pursuits, how did the flesh-and-blood Adam Smith see himself? Was it not, first and foremost, as a man of letters, a prose poet? For us, Smith’s love of language and les belles lettres is the golden thread that unifies the many-sidedness of Smith’s life and works. Perhaps we are wrong, but in the words of our colleague and friend Paul Sagar: ‘what is the point of any of this if we are not willing to debate things through?’”[4]  

The penultimate part of my forthcoming survey of open Adam Smith problems with Salim Rashid (Chapter 12) contains a grab bag of additional sundry questions and miscellaneous Smith mysteries, all of which are deserving of further scrutiny. Below is an excerpt (footnotes are below the fold):

“In the very first letter that Adam Smith wrote to Charles Townshend (Corr. No. 39), Smith mentions that he ‘sent about a fortnight ago the books which you ordered for the Duke of Buccleugh [from] Mr. Campbell at Edinburgh.’[1] This letter is dated 17 September 1759, and according to Ernest Mossner and Ian Simpson Ross (1987, p. 57 n.2), the books Smith is referring to in his 17 September letter were supplied by Robert and Andrew Foulis, the printers to the University of Glasgow. Mossner and Ross also tracked down the complete list of books—46 separate tomes in all—meant for Duke Henry.[2] The list contains most of great works of ancient Greek and Roman literature, starting with Homer’s Iliad, and in the words of Mossner and Ross (ibid.), ‘The list is instructive in representing the range of authors thought suitable for educating the young Duke, and for reflecting the stock of the Foulis brothers, both as booksellers and printers.’[3] For reference, below is the list of books Smith had ordered for Duke Henry as reported by Mossner and Ross:

1. Homeri Ilias 2 Vol. large folio
2. —Odyssea 2 Vol. large folio
3. Callimachus Gr. cum figuris folio
4. Caesaris Opera folio
5. Sophocles Gr. 4to
6. Aeschylus Gr. 4to
7. Plinij Epistolae & Panegyricus 4to
8. Theocritus Gr. 4to
9. Minucius Felix 4to
10. Homeri Ilias 2 Vol. Gr. 4to
11. Caesaris Opera 4to
12. Boetius de Consolatione Philosophiae
13. Tyrtaeus Gr. Lat. 4to
14. Demetrius Phalereus de Elocutione
15. Terentij Comoediae, 8vo
16. Homeri Ilias Gr. Lat. 3 Vol. 8vo
17. Sophocles Gr. Lat. 2 Vol. 8vo
18. Aeschylus Gr. Lat. 2 Vol. 8vo
19. Theocritus Gr. Lat. 8vo
20. Minucius Felix 8vo
21. Aristophanis Nubes Gr. Lat. 8vo
22. Boetius de Consolatione, &c. 8vo
23. Antoninus Gr. Lat. 8vo 2 Vol.[4]  
24. Plutarchus de Poetis audiendis Gr. Lat. 8vo
25. Euripidis Orestes Gr. Lat. 8vo
26. Aristoteles de Mundo Gr. Lat. 8vo
27. Epictetus & Cebes Gr. Lat. 8vo large print
28. Anacreon Gr. large print, 8vo
29. Theophrasti Characteres Gr. Lat. large print 8vo
30. Horatius, editio ultima 8vo
31. Virgilius, editio ult. 8vo
32. Sallustius 8vo
33. Lucretius 8vo
34. Paterculus 8vo
35. Tibullus & Propertius 8vo
36. Poetae Latini minores 8vo
37. Iuvenalis & Persius 8vo
38. Pomponius Mela de situ Orbis 8vo
39. Phaedrus & P. Syrus 8vo
40. Thucydides de Peste Gr. Lat. 8vo
41. Plinij Epist. & Panegyr. 2 Vol. 12mo
42. Tacitus 4 Vol. 12mo
43. Hippocratis Aphorismi Gr. Lat. 12mo
44. Epictetus & Cebes Gr. Lat. 12mo 2 6
45. Pindari Opera 3 Vol. Gr. small size
46. Ciceronis Opera 20 Vol. fine

“We have questions! Who put together this comprehensive list of classical readings? Adam Smith or Charles Townshend? Smith’s letter to Townshend informs us that it was the British politician who ordered the books, but it must have been Smith who recommended the titles in this list, right? Either way, how many of these classics had Smith himself read and studied, and which ones were his favorites? Also, how many of these great works were assigned readings in Smith’s own courses at the University of Glasgow?”