As Dubner has shown in the past, a quick snapshot — of a congestion-pricing poster in this case — can spark a lot of discussion. So send us your photo or snapshot (here) — and be sure to tell us where it was taken, who took it, and what makes it Freak-worthy. We’ll publish our favorites on the blog. They . . .
“‘Libertarian paternalism’ is just the sort of phrase that makes me stop paying attention,” Levitt recently blogged. But he (and I) couldn’t stop reading about it in Richard Thaler’s and Cass Sunstein’s book, Nudge, which uses urinals, ABBA, and Homer Simpson (and cutting-edge research) to argue that by simply giving more thought to the way they present choices to people . . .
Advertisements like this one, meant to win people over to congestion pricing, just sound bitter after the death of New York’s proposed plan last week. And New Yorkers will likely continue to see Varick Street as I did at 7:00 last Thursday evening: Varick Street, 7 p.m. But even while the debate was still raging, many of the plan’s particulars . . .
… the new editor of this blog, Annika Mengisen. She comes to Freakonomics from TheStreet.com, where she was small-business editor and staff reporter. She studied journalism and fine arts at Rutgers; her current extracurriculars include boxing, small-scale theater, and serving as a rape-crisis counselor at New York-Presbyterian Hospital. Her name alone would seem to be fitting for this job. You . . .