prior probability

What if humans were allowed to sell their blood to vampires? Would vampire slayers become extinct? I consider those questions and more in my 2014 essay “Buy or Bite?” and in this Freakonomics Radio podcast. (Here is a full list of vampire movies and TV series on Netflix, but to my knowledge, none of these pop culture classics explore vampire markets or the legalization of blood sales.)

“Do you want to be known for your writing, or for your swift email responses?” Whether you are a busy student or full-fledged academic, a start-up entrepreneur or the CEO of a Fortune 500 firm, it is essential to “just say no” to daily distractions like TV, social media, email, and other time-sucking activities. (Or at least cut down on these soul-destroying time thieves.) Or in the words of the late great Steve Jobs: “People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on. But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully. I’m actually as proud of the things we haven’t done as the things I have done. Innovation is saying no to 1,000 things.” Additional thoughts on the virtues of saying “no” are available here.

If so, which one? Early Wittgenstein or Late Wittgenstein or both! Two philosophers discuss these questions here, while the main case against both Wittgensteins is presented in summary fashion here. (Here is one morsel: “Wittgenstein’s reputation for genius did not depend on [his] incomprehensibility alone.”) On another note, below is a picture of Wittgenstein’s remote cabin in Norway (via Cabin Porn), where the great philosopher would spend his sabbaticals alone thinking important thoughts. Double hat tip: Brian Leiter.

Photo credit: Jon Bolstad

Was the U.S. military raid against ISIS strongman Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi illegal? After all, Congress has not authorized the use of force in Syria nor declared war against ISIS. By comparison, what if a Mexican drug cartel or an Iranian mullah ordered a hit against the president?

When poor people break the rules, overzealous prosecutors and judges throw the book at them, but when wealthy people commit even worse misdeeds, they get the proverbial slap on he wrist. What kind of bullshit justice is that?

Guess who served only 11 days …

This is what we will be viewing over the weekend; more details about this documentary are available here, via NPR.

Have you read David Leonhardt’s exposé in the N.Y. Times “The Rich Really Do Pay Lower Taxes Than You“? According to Mr Leonhardt: “For the first time on record, the 400 wealthiest Americans last year paid a lower total tax rate–spanning federal, state, and local taxes–than any other income group ….” What this selective quotation does not tell you, however, is that the overall tax rate on the richest 400 households last year was “only” 23 percent and that the top 1% paid the highest total tax rate (between 29 and 30 percent)! So, why not get rid of all taxes and replace our current complicated and convoluted system with a “single tax“? (In case you are wondering, here is a list of the 400 wealthiest Americans.)

File under “the mysteries of pricing.” As of this writing, it will cost you $25 USD to park your car at a distant parking lot (the tram ride to the park is “free”) and $50 USD if you want to avoid the tram and park your car next to the theme park itself. Why doesn’t Disney just add the cost of parking to the price of each theme park ticket (say, an extra $5 per entrance ticket) and make parking “free”?

They aren’t the only ones to have secret Twitter “burner” accounts, but what motivates this contemporary form of moral cowardice? What if every Twitter user had their own burner account? Bonus question: Does the President (@realDonaldTrump) have a secret Twitter persona as well?

Above is Joan Miró’s painting Personage depicting one of his dreams from the 1920s. According to this blurb, Miró’s art was “stimulated … by hunger-induced hallucinations involving his impressions of poetry. These resulted in the artist’s ‘dream paintings,’ such as Personage, in which ghostly figures hover in a bluish ether…. In these [dream] works Miró began to develop his own language of enigmatic signs: the forms in Personage depict a large vestigial foot and a head with three ‘teeth’ in its grinning mouth. The star shape often represents female genitalia in Miró’s oeuvre, and the dot with four rays symbolizes the vision of a disembodied eye.” The dream painting above is part of the Guggenheim’s collection in New York City.