We’ve written extensively about the consequences of baby naming. The name you choose for your children can affect his “Google-ability” or even get you in trouble with the law. A new survey of 2,000 elementary school teachers in Germany finds that your children’s names may also affect how teachers perceive them (translation available here).
We’ve blogged before about sites like Swivel and ManyEyes, data-mashup sites which allow users to upload datasets, create tables, share them with other users, and compare them to other datasets on the sites. This week a new open data project, Factual, was launched by Google alum Gil Elbaz.
Paul Offit is one of America’s most-hated scientists. He’s been called a “biostitute” for the pharmaceutical industry and been threatened with death for his advocacy of one of medicine’s greatest innovations: vaccines. In recent years, anti-vaccine sentiment has spread like, well, an epidemic, with frightening results.
We tell quite a few stories about unintended consequences in SuperFreakonomics, including what happens when governments add or increase a trash-collection tax — like this one and this one.
But I don’t think any stories we tell are quite as interesting as the following one, sent in by a reader named Jack Crichton in British Columbia:
It seems inevitable that discussions of climate science would degenerate to being deeply politicized and polarized. Depending on which views are adopted, individuals, industries, and countries will gain or lose, which provides ample motive. Once people with a strong political or ideological bent latch onto an issue, it becomes hard to have a reasonable discussion; once you’re in a political mode, the focus in the discussion changes. Everything becomes an attempt to protect territory. Evidence and logic becomes secondary, used when advantageous and discarded when expedient. What should be a rational debate becomes a personal and venal brawl. Rational, scientific debate that could advance the common good gets usurped by personal attacks and counterattacks.
SuperFreakonomics officially debuts today, already near the top of the Amazon bestseller lists here in the U.S., in Canada, and in the U. K.. The Financial Times calls SuperFreakonomics “a page-turner… a book with plenty of style; underneath the dazzle, there is substance too.” The New York Post advises: “Don’t go to the water cooler without it.”
Obama expressed his disappointment recently when rapper Kanye West stormed the stage at the MTV Video Music Awards to protest singer Taylor Swift’s win of the “Best Female Video” trophy. Soon after, Obama himself was Swifted by critics who felt he was undeserving of his Nobel Prize win. This process is “not wildly out of character with how awards generally work,” writes Jonathan Chait at The New Republic.
International children’s rights advocates focus significant resources on eliminating child labor in developing countries, often advocating consumer boycotts and international regulation. Despite all these efforts, however, child labor is still prevalent throughout the developing world. Matthias Doepke and Fabrizio Zilibotti think all that international pressure may actually be worsening the child labor problem.
What do Ignatz Semmelweis and Robert S. McNamara have in common? Your answer should include a cost component.
The answer, and the winner, will be revealed early next week. Good luck.
Just as flu season gathers force here in the northern hemisphere, it’s petering out in the southern half of the globe. No matter where you are, you’re more susceptible to the flu in the winter months. Even if, let’s say, some research physicians expose you to live flu virus in the middle of summer, you’re still less likely to get sick than if the same doctors hit you with the same virus in the dead of winter. Why?
There’s a price war going on among booksellers — WalMart is offering a handful of big new books for just $10, which forced Amazon to counter — but unfortunately, SuperFreakonomics is not one of them. On Amazon, it costs $16.19. Is it worth it?
To help you decide, here’s a roundup of some early notices for the book:
Scientists have long been aware of the “uncanny valley” phenomenon, which describes “that disquieting feeling that occurs when viewers look at representations designed to be as human-like as possible — whether computer animations or androids — but somehow fall short.” This might explain why people loved The Incredibles but were disturbed by the too-real characters in the film version of The Polar Express.
Yesterday, HuffingtonPost ran this cast of characters you can expect to hear about in SuperFreakonomics. It was accompanied by a video preview in which Dubner’s juggling practice pays off and Levitt wonders why college students, if they’re so altruistic in the lab, never give him money in the subway:
Fascinating article in today’s Washington Post by Emily Wax about how Indian brides-to-be are holding out for one particular convenience before committing to marriage: an indoor toilet.
But wait, you may say: women in India don’t have the leverage to make such demands, do they?
One morning in 1992, a Chicago radio reporter looked into the river and, stunned, told listeners he saw “swirling water that looks like a giant drain … I think someone should wake up the mayor!”
The announcement that Barack Obama will receive this year’s Nobel Peace Prize only 10 months into his presidency surprised many, including us. Even more surprising, Obama was nominated for the award only 12 days after he took office. Now F.P. Passport has taken a look at what Obama did in those 12 days to attract the attention of the Committee.
In both sports, it’s expected that someone or something “almost always get[s] hurt,” writes Malcolm Gladwell in this New Yorker article, where he goes over the sports’ similarities — including the reason why, despite their brutality, both will likely stick around for a long time.
In celebration of its 150th issue, The British Psychological Society’s Research Digest has asked some of the world’s foremost psychologists to share one nagging thing they still don’t understand about themselves. Their responses are varied and fascinating.
The charity auction for the first copy off the presses of SuperFreakonomics will wrap up later today.
Architect Carolyn Steel’s TED talk, posted this week, discusses how ancient food routes shaped the cities we live in today and the future of food in our world. Steel believes we can “use food as a really powerful tool, a conceptual tool, a design tool to shape the world differently.”
We’ve posted several times about interesting odd pairs and strange promotional gimmicks. Now hotels, facing persistently low occupancy rates, are getting in on the act. The Hotel Erwin in Venice Beach now offers a package with a new tattoo and a bottle of tequila (to numb the pain).
The Independent featured a series of before-and-after photos from photographer Lois Hechenblaikner’s book Off Piste: An Alpine Story that show “how skiing changed the Alps” during the last few decades.
For a few months now, we’ve been soliciting reader questions for Captain Steve, a pilot with a major U.S. airline. You can find his first few batches of answers here, and he’s back now with another round. You can leave new questions for him in the comments section below.
Women are lighter and thus cost less than men to transport to space, they’re less prone to heart attacks, and they do better in isolation tests, reasoned Randy Lovelace when he founded the Women In Space Earliest program in 1959 to test women for their “qualifications as astronauts,” as this Wired article reports.
Researchers at the University of Tokyo say they’ve created a paint that blocks out wireless signals, reports the BBC. You can use it, for example, to make sure your neighbor doesn’t steal your wi-fi, and movie theaters can use it to stop cell-phones from interrupting films.
Hedgeable.com is holding a contest to find the American investor who lost the most during the recession, reports The Economist; they want the “financial world’s equivalent of Paris Hilton” (named worst actress at this year’s Golden Raspberries).
Nairobi’s City Council recently made life a little more difficult for the city’s residents by outlawing a wide variety of mundane activities. Things like blowing your noise without a tissue, spitting in the street, crossing the road while talking on the phone, and making loud noises will now result in a fine or jail term.
A while back, we gave you a sneak peak of the SuperFreakonomics book cover. Your comments were a blast to read. Who knew there were so many graphic designers among our readership?
Alas, we didn’t change a thing about the cover. Here’s a brief video clip, shot by Meghan Shupe, of the cover being printed. The machine is in Maryland and shoots out 900 jackets a minute.
Muammar el-Qaddafi, the leader of Libya, recently attracted attention for his colorful speech to the United Nations General Assembly. He was hardly the first world leader to go off the reservation while addressing the U.N.
When athletes are exposed as dopers, we heap scorn and doubt on their accomplishments. What about college students? An estimated 25 percent of them now illegally use concentration- and memory-boosting drugs to help them make the grade. One researcher wonders if academics are willing to subject themselves to the same anti-doping circus now dogging sports.
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