1. Tired of Google Street View yet? Here, via TechCrunch, is the next step on the horizon: Microsoft’s Photosynth Project is developing a network of 3-D virtual maps depicting actual places. Meanwhile, 3-D street views of ten cities will launch this fall on Everyscape. No word yet on whether the scenes will feature virtual peeing bystanders, dozing cats, or Dubner’s . . .
Despite our slight incredulity, Freakonomics has beaten Jane Austen and advanced to the final round of Time Out New York‘s “Ultimate Book Bracket,” meant to determine the book most essential to cocktail party conversation in New York City. Now Freakonomics is up against the winner of the “American Classics” category, none other than Vladimir Nabokov‘s Lolita. At first blush, the . . .
June 18 is International Panic Day, a day “for everyone to be worried and concerned,” according to HolidayInsights.com.
One of the most controversial small points in Freakonomics was the claim that early childhood test scores are not correlated to the amount a child is read to at home. If you read Carl Bialik‘s “Numbers Guy” column in today’s Wall Street Journal, you’ll learn why so many people have thought otherwise. Here’s an excerpt: Children from low-income households average . . .
Here’s a creative solution to the stall in Army recruitment: the military and senior defense officials are trying to get a bill through Congress that would allow recruitment of illegal aliens. The main attraction for the recruits, besides the steady job itself, would be the prize of citizenship. Picking up where Second Life leaves off, IBM has developed Innov8, a . . .
June 15 is Celebrate the Power of a Smile Day, in which we’re instructed to “smile at everyone you see all day long.”
In stark contrast to tales of 60-story homes being built in Mumbai, reader Aparna Vemuri wrote in with this story about the bootstrap entrepreneurship of Dharavi, the largest shantytown in Asia, in which nearly every resident produces a good. While the region’s poverty is undeniable, results are starting to show: as of 2006, all homes had 24-hour electricity and running . . .
In addition to their growing overlap with the laws and regulations of the physical world, virtual worlds are providing psychologists with new data sources and research for theories like Transformed Social Interaction, self-perception theory, and the Proteus Effect. Via TheStreet: In the wake of the Paris Hilton prison fiasco, financial blogger Eddy Elfenbein at Crossing Wall Street tracks the (continually . . .
June 13 is?National Juggling Day — not to be confused with International Juggler’s Day on April 18,?as well as?Britain’s?World Juggling Day on June 15, which kicks off a weekend-long juggling extravaganza.
Dubner recently blogged about the most popular dog names in New York City. Now reader Nancy Callahan brings to our attention the 2006 list of top dog and cat names in the U.K. Granted, the list might be more accurately titled “The Top Pet Names of U.K. Residents Who Purchase Pet Insurance” — it was compiled by Direct Line, a . . .
Reader Sean Swanzy alerted us to Penny Postcards, a wonderful Web site that allows private collectors to share images of postcards from every county and state in the union, with mailing dates spanning the twentieth century. Not that we’re geographically biased, but the New York City collection is particularly impressive. From the Gainesville Sun via Consumerist: Florida’s Sun State Credit . . .
June 12 is the Feast of St. Onuphrius, the patron saint of weavers, who received his title for wearing nothing but a loincloth made of leaves and a garment woven entirely from his own hair. No word on his pricing scheme for weaving other people’s hair.
From reader Paul O’Keef: Architectural Record reports that India’s richest man is building a sixty-story house for his family, including six floors for parking, a health club and a rooftop helipad. The University of Georgia is offering a new incentive to make student-athletes show up for class: fining them $10 per unexcused absence. In the policy’s first month, the number . . .
June 11 marks the first day of?Meet A Mate Week. For those with a slightly different idea of the perfect mate, it’s also Adopt-a-Cat Month.
From Reuters, via the New Zealand Herald: Contrary to the notion that American tourists are obnoxious, a survey of 15,000 European hoteliers found that Americans ranked second, behind the Japanese, as the world’s politest and most preferable guests. This may have to do, of course, with our great fondness for tipping. Britons, meanwhile, were rated the fifth worst tourists, due . . .
June 8 is Lindisfarne Day, commemorating the 793 C.E. Viking raid of the Isle of Lindisfarne,?as well as National Jelly-Filled Donut Day?(not to be confused with last week’s National Doughnut Day).
This week marks the launch of Covestor, an online investor service that allows other “covestors” to assess and even mimic your investment style. (Hat tip: Matthew Hertz.) Reader Elizabeth Gonzalez alerted us to an interesting consumer trend: high-end furniture and fashion accessories made from recycled trash. Here’s an example. Because nothing says “green” like a purse made from old Firestones. . . .
June 7 is National Chocolate Ice Cream Day – doubly appropriate given that June is also National Dairy Month.
This week’s New York Magazine breaks down how money is made by all kinds of New York City individuals and businesses from a yellow-cab driver to sex shops to financial firms. Levitt gets a hat tip in the “Drug Dealer” write-up. A CDC study finds that violence costs the U.S. more than $70 billion per year, as much as the . . .
In addition to being the anniversary of D-Day,?June 6 is National Yo-Yo Day, in honor of the birthday of yo-yo entrepreneur and trademark holder Donald Duncan Sr. (FWIW, it’s rumored that a Freakonomics yo-yo is currently in production.)
Last week was a busy one for the visual wizards at Google. First, the company launched Street View, which offers street-level photos of San Francisco, New York, Miami, Denver, and Las Vegas; the remarkable new service promptly drew controversy as bloggers and surprised photo subjects raised privacy concerns. Then came word that the alleged JFK bombing suspects had used images . . .
Just in time for tonight’s GOP debates, Michael Scherer at Salon offers a closer look at the growing GOP shake-up caused by presidential candidate Ron Paul, whom we’ve blogged about before. News from the International Journal of Hospitality Management: Diners will spend more money in your restaurant if it is scented with lavender. The bad news, as pointed out by . . .
June 5 is a virtual smorgasbord of holidays, including Hunger Awareness Day and World Environment Day as well as Saint Boniface Day and, of course, National Gingerbread Day (but you already knew that). Perhaps the proper celebration involves eating gingerbread on an empty stomach while taking an outdoor stroll past St. Boniface Church in San Francisco.
Looks like all that time spent on MySpace could start earning you college credits. Via Andrew Lavallee at the Wall Street Journal: More and more universities are incorporating curricula on social computing, allowing students to study subjects like online communities, social networking and user-contributed content as part of graduate and undergrad programs. This month in Scientific American, Cornell economics professor . . .
A reader named Jeff Stier wrote to inform us of the upcoming Angels in Waiting Third Annual Blood Drive in Memory of Joel Kirshner, for which Stier is the project director. Last year, the event was the largest mobile blood drive in the history of the New York Blood Center. For the past two years, the organizers have offered donors . . .
True to our word, we’re continuing the tradition of noting our nation’s bottomless appetite for holidays, official or otherwise. And so: Happy Monday, June 4, also known as Old Maid’s Day. A little background on the holiday’s origin, via FierceWomen.com: According to Holiday Insights this is the day to “put into the spotlight all of the fair maidens who have . . .
Reader Helen DeWitt writes in with the following description of the U.S. military’s current system of officer promotion, as told to her by an Air Force officer who just returned from Baghdad: Officers rise through the system without relevance to merit; promotions are based on the length of time the officer has been in the system. (Up to the rank . . .
We’ve decided to begin a new tradition here at Freakonomics in which we call attention to the diversity and richness of America’s unique capacity for celebration (and self-interest) by highlighting the official (or unofficial) holiday associated with each day of the year (and yes, there is at least one holiday for each day of the year). And so … drumroll . . .
Given that we’re already spending the GNP of a small nation on weddings, why not include a little Internet video to share those Big Days with the world? The Wall Street Journal reports that wedding Web sites are a bigger phenomenon than ever, with couples sharing details of their nuptials in blogs, webcasts and online videos. Consumerist offers a conspiracy-busting . . .
Levitt and Dubner have written before about the origins of star-making talent. But can the road to pop culture megastardom be calculated as a matter of statistical probability? Back in 1994, Kee Chung of SUNY-Buffalo and Raymond Cox of the University of Ontario Institute of Technology applied an equation called the Yule-Simon Distribution to this question. Their findings were that . . .
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