prior probability

Christmas is just around the corner — seven days away — so I hereby declare this Monday, 18 December (instead of Sunday, 10 December) my own personal “Digital Detox Day“! I am therefore taking the next day or two off from the Internet (Amazon, blogs, email, social media, etc.) to spend with my family and catch up on some reading. Won’t you join me?

I confess: I really love this all-time Mariah Carey classic!

Double bonus “Carpool Karaoke” and Yu Huiyeol’s “K-pop” versions below:

Blast from the past (2016), via the now-defunct blog Unlikely Words.

We’ve all by now seen this excellent Die Hard Christmas tree ornament, but since it got spread around virally so late in the year no one had any time…

How to make your own Die Hard Christmas tree ornament.

Via my favorite expat blog View from the Back. The shop is À la Mère de Famille (pictured below), and it was founded in 1760. I wonder if Adam Smith or his pupil the 3rd Duke of Buccleugh visited this place in 1766 during their sojourn in the City of Lights. Merry Christmas!

I’ve recently returned from a(nother) trip to Paris  – more of which in the New Year – where, aside from visiting the latest exhibitions, window …

The oldest sweetie shop in Paris

Christmas is just 11 days away! In addition to a number of research articles, essays, etc., I will be reading the following books — and blogging about them — during the holidays:

• Robert Darnton, The Revolutionary Temper: Paris, 1748-1789 (Norton, 2024); book cover pictured below.
• Shaun Harris, The Hemingway Thief (Seventh Street Books, 2016).
• Franz Huber, Belief and Degrees of Belief (Springer, 2009).
• Paul Sagar, Adam Smith Reconsidered: History, Liberty, and the Foundations of Modern Politics (Princeton, 2022).

That is the new title of my revised work-in-progress. Here is the abstract: “What is liberalism, and what is the relation between law and liberty? This paper presents a Coasian critique of liberalism, whether seen from the progressive perspective of Cass Sunstein or from the libertarian perspective of Dan Klein.” Added bonus links: Sunstein’s recent op-ed “Why I am a liberal” (20 Nov. 2023) and Klein’s 2015 “plea” reading the term “liberal”. (In the alternative, a video of Klein’s plea is posted below.)

Today (12 December) is the Feast Day of Our Lady of Guadalupe, a national holiday in Mexico and one of my favorite feast days of the year! (More details here and here, in Spanish.)

On this day (11 December) in 1972, the sixth and final manned mission (Apollo 17) lands on the Moon.

My colleague and dear friend Patricia Navarro Velez was taken from us on 6 December, one of more than 40,000 people killed in gun violence in the U.S. so far this year. Here is the link to the verified GoFundMe campaign for her family: https://www.gofundme.com/f/62d9t-navarro-family