Lynne Kiesling Robert Ayres has very kindly done the math to show why Posner’s statement in the WSJ that I referred to on Tuesday is correct, but agrees with me that he could have said it better. From the email he sent me: If his “later” means “later in the century”, then the question is …
The Math Behind The “Once In A Century” Statement Read More »
Lynne Kiesling In today’s Wall Street Journal Richard Posner has a commentary on the probability of catastrophe (subscription required), largely inspired by the tsunami last week and his new book, Catastrophe: Risk and Response. From the Publisher’s Weekly editorial review of the book: Criticizing the “blinkered perspective” of civil libertarians hung up on constitutional law, …
Lynne Kiesling Today Tyler Cowen has an interesting post on duels. At the ISNIE conference in Tucson in September, Doug Allen from Simon Fraser University presented a paper entitled “The Duel of Honor: Screening for Unobservable Social Capital” (co-authored with Clyde Reed). Unfortunately, Doug’s not got it on his website, nor is it available from …
Lynne Kiesling The Amazon American Red Cross donation page just clicked over $4.7 million, and over 77,000 donors. This is fabulous and astounding, a wonderful combination of simple leadership and vision on Amazon’s part, sympathy and beneficence, and the application of technology to harness the best wishes and actions of a highly distributed global population …
Lynne Kiesling … and sitting at argo tea on Armitage in Chicago, catching up and enjoying a lovely cuppa along with wireless. When we flew into Midway from Baltimore last night I noticed something that I didn’t see on the marquee over the street when we left: between 23 December and 4 January, hourly parking …
Lynne Kiesling I’m working my way through the recent Daedelus issue on human nature, but have not read the Rorty article yet. I wasn’t expecting a strong, persuasive argument. Apparently, according to Will Wilkinson, my expectations are even a little high: Richard Rorty’s paper, “Philosopher-envy” in the new Daedalus issue on human nature is just …
Lynne Kiesling We are still early enough in the proliferation of cell phones that people have not learned and developed judgment and discipline in their public use. I occasionally find this irksome, but struggle to find a way to stop it. Stephen Karlson at Cold Spring Shops has some useful recommendations that he has gathered …
Lynne Kiesling Please go read Brad DeLong’s post on taking Adam Smith out of context. Now. All of his points are well taken. I would only add two things. People who like to take Adam Smith out of context and caricature his thought have not read or thought carefully enough about Smith’s Theory of Moral …
Michael Giberson The judge has thrown out part of the lawsuit that Geico filed against Google. See my earlier post here. See Kevin Brancato at Truck and Barter for an update.
Michael Giberson The latest Review of Network Economics, which focuses on road transport issues, arrived just after the latest family Thanksgiving trip down I-95 in the Eastern United States. Traveling on I-95 prompted me to wonder how I should be driving in traffic so as to minimize the negative externalities I was imposing on everyone …
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