This is a few months old, but still well worth a listen: an NPR interview with Lia Scholl of Star Light Ministries, an outfit in Springfield, Va., that counsels exotic dancers. Here, from Star Light’s Web site, is its mission statement: Most exotic dancers are young women who come from varied socio-economic backgrounds. Their education levels vary — some have . . .
Girls have a built-in neurological advantage over boys when it comes to language skills, according to new research from Northwestern University and the University of Haifa. The researchers found that while girls can easily process language in the abstract, boys depend more on their senses. The upshot is that boys may need to be taught both visually and verbally, while . . .
That is the question asked by the economists Barry Eichengreen (Berkeley) and Douglas A. Irwin (Dartmouth) in an NBER working paper called “International Economic Policy: Was There a Bush Doctrine?” When it comes to foreign economic policy, their answer is an emphatic “no.” From their abstract: While many political scientists and diplomatic historians see the Bush presidency as a distinctive . . .
There’s been a lot of talk lately about the science of happiness, including on this very blog.. But could leading a happy life be largely a matter of genes? The U.K.’s Daily Record reports on a finding by Edinburgh University psychologists that “inherited genes control up to half of the personality traits that keep us happy.” Those with the “happy” . . .
Prostitution gets a technology upgrade. The new pricing scale for prostitution. (Earlier) Could adding vinegar make biofuels less inefficient? (Earlier) Are self-experimenters good for science? (Earlier)
James Hurman, a 30-year-old man from Auckland, N.Z., is selling his smoking habit to the highest bidder. (Apparently, he hasn’t run across StickK, or been offered a 0 percent interest bank account to quit.) Here’s what Hurman has to say for himself: I’ve smoked cigarettes for twelve years and I’ve tried all the usual ways to quit smoking. Now that . . .
Reader Roberto Ruiz alerted us to this mock news report from the Onion on an “anonymous donation” of 200 kidneys to a hospital. While the joke is graphic (and the accompanying video footage may not be suitable for the squeamish) the satire is right on point — in the absence of other ways to acquire urgently needed kidneys, some may . . .
Astute readers of this blog know that we have an abiding interest in the economics of prostitution. One of the people who will be featured in our next book is a high-end call girl who goes by the name of Allie. Without giving away much detail here, let me just say that Allie is a very bright and attractive blonde . . .
We just returned from four days of hiking in Big Bend National Park, and today we drove 500 miles in Texas along I-10. A number of oil wells were pumping vigorously along the highway. When we took the same road 6 years ago, the wells were there, but they were not pumping. This is no surprise: in 2002 the price . . .
The baby names debate continues. (Earlier) Head of new NYC Office of Financial Empowerment answers questions. (Earlier) Is public peer review necessary in security? (Earlier) Dirty, dirty biofuel
When Anders Ericsson and his colleagues in the “expert performance” movement — we’ve written about them before, and we’ll write about them again — try to explain what it is that makes someone very good at what he or she does, they focus on “deliberate practice.” This means that, your level of natural talent notwithstanding, excellence is accomplished mainly through . . .
If we judge politicians by what they buy, then Eliot Spitzer has clearly violated the public’s trust: he purchased the services of a high-priced prostitute, and may well end his political career as a result. But what if we judge politicians by what they sell? On this score, Spitzer may be one of the few politicians who has not prostituted . . .
One of my earliest and happiest memories was being released from a hospital oxygen tent when I was a small child. I had developed pneumonia and was in pretty bad shape. They not only kept me under an oxygen tent for several days at St. Luke’s Hospital in Kansas City, but they also gave me massive amounts of tetracycline. The . . .
The American Political Science Review‘s Feb. 2008 issue has a new study by Alan Gerber, Donald Green, and Christopher Larimer testing the accuracy of voter turnout theories based on “rational self-interested behavior.” The researchers sought to “distinguish between two aspects of this type of utility, intrinsic satisfaction from behaving in accordance with a norm and extrinsic incentives to comply.” To . . .
Last week I posed what I thought would be a very hard question asking which player Roy Williams called the best 3-point shooter he had ever coached. I even did some Google searches to make sure that the answer wasn’t out there. I suppose I should have assumed that something that gets announced over the loudspeakers at a Celtics game . . .
Why are there so many fake memoirs in the world? The latest is Margaret Seltzer‘s Love and Consequences. (I would link to its Amazon page but, alas, it no longer has an Amazon page.) If you had written a memoir that was, say, 60 percent true, would you try to present it as a memoir or as a novel? If . . .
Author visits all 22 countries ranked “happier” than the U.S. (Earlier) Scientists study the key to artists’ improvisation Bigger computer monitors may lead to greater worker productivity Will hefty cash prizes stimulate “revolutionary” science? (Earlier)
The next time a traffic jam materializes in front of you for no apparent reason, think about Japan. That’s where scientists have, for the first time, recreated “shockwave” traffic jams, in which one driver’s slowing down creates a ripple effect that moves backwards through traffic, grinding everything to a halt for miles. They say recreating the phenomenon successfully is the . . .
We’ve written in the past about the (presumed) worthlessness of book blurbs. But I just came across one blurb that I think might be an exception. The book in question is Why Blacks Fear “America’s Mayor”: Reporting Police Brutality and Black Activist Politics Under Rudy Giuliani. You may recall that this was the book Al Sharpton was reading on a . . .
That’s the clever title of the latest paper from Dean Karlan (one of the founders of StickK.com, who was featured in this New York Times Magazine article yesterday along with my colleague John List) and co-authors Xavier Giné and Jonathan Zinman. The researchers had surveyors approach people on the streets of the Philippines and offer them the opportunity to open . . .
Sudhir Venkatesh, Columbia sociologist and author of “Gang Leader for a Day,” is back once again with his chronicle of watching “The Wire” with a group of gangland acquaintances. His past reports can be found here. I should have seen it coming. But I didn’t. The Thugs informed me that they were not interested in watching the last 2 episodes . . .
Can learning about the arts make you smarter? Are animals next in the sports doping craze? (Second item) (Earlier) Is economics “played out”? The rise of “freeconomics.”
In their March 9, 2008, column in the Times Magazine, Dubner and Levitt ask: why can’t a charity be run more like a business? They look at two philanthropies that have adopted unorthodox business models. Smile Train, which performs free cleft-repair surgery for poor children around the world, started training local doctors rather than flying in U.S. surgeons; this has . . .
There has been a lot of hand-wringing about whether or not the U.S. economy is currently in a recession. This morning’s data will, I think, lead to a near-unanimous view that the U.S. economy is in a recession. Not only was employment growth in February negative, but the B.L.S. also tells us that the previous two months were worse than . . .
One of the perks of being an M.I.T. graduate is that I get an automatic subscription to the magazine Technology Review. I highly recommend it to anyone with a curiosity about science and technology. It is not technical or hard to understand (like, say, Scientific American). Rather, it is loaded with fascinating articles about cutting edge advances in technology, written . . .
Lecturing on divorce today, I was reminded of the refrain in Clay Walker‘s song, Then What: “Then what, what you gonna do, when the new wears off and the old shines through, and it ain’t really love and it ain’t really lust, and you ain’t anybody anyone’s gonna trust. … When you can’t turn back for the bridges you burn….” . . .
Professional golfer Tripp Isenhour is learning this subtle distinction the hard way.
A survey by BabyCenter, a popular Web site for expecting mothers, found that 58 percent of parents believe that the name they give their baby will contribute to his or her success in life. Apparently they didn’t read Freakonomics, or at least they didn’t believe it. So what qualities did these parents want their chosen names to have? For boys, . . .
The gender-swapping trend in online gaming. New software fights fraud on gambling sites. (Earlier) Atlanta man builds robot to chase away drug dealers. (Earlier) Doctors don’t get enough sleep for optimal functioning.
Reader Steve Harbeck writes: [This week]’s newspapers note that gold has hit a new high. This will predictably result in stories of senior citizens lining up to sell old jewelry and coins. But what of the more nuanced consequences? I discussed this with a colleague of mine, a risk manager, and we see the following possibilities … and opportunities: 1. . . .