I have a favorite thought exercise, especially when thinking about the sort of complex, dynamic systems that are interesting but difficult to write about: the health-care system, e.g., or education, politics, energy consumption, finance, cancer research, etc. One natural way to approach such systems is to take note of what inputs and outputs already exist and then, isolating them, try . . .
If you happen to live near Minneapolis, or are passing through in the vicinity of June 18, please stop in and hear me give a lunchtime Freakonomics lecture. I will be warming up for this fellow. Perhaps this time I will have a chance to ask him some of your questions. I am not sure why he gets such bigger . . .
Once upon a time, my friend and co-author Steve Levitt was known as the most outstanding American economist under 40. I have it on good authority that this is no longer true. On May 29, Levitt turned 40. His greatest birthday fear was that someone would throw him a party. He is fiercely anti-party, especially when the party is his. . . .
Now it’s been revealed that the reality show we blogged about the other day was a hoax designed to call attention to the shortage of donated organs. The contestants who needed kidneys really do need kidneys, but the “donor” was an actress. “We have only done this cry for help because we want to solve a problem that shouldn’t be . . .
In the New England Journal of Medicine, Dr. Miriam Shuchman writes about the movement in Congress to allow the FDA to block direct-to-consumer ads for new drugs. “There is popular support for a ban: in a telephone survey conducted in March 2007 by Consumer Reports, 59% of respondents ‘strongly agreed’ that the FDA should ban advertisements for drugs that had . . .
There was a nifty article in the New York Times Magazine a while back about “literary spam,” junk e-mail that includes passages from literary classics, in the hopes that legitimate text would fool spam filters. (Apparently, it doesn’t.) I just got a piece of spam that’s even niftier. Its subject line: “yipping econometrica psychophysiology flourish.” Considering the kind of messages . . .
A lot of you asked really good questions of Mark Cuban, which he will now pick through and answer. As it turns out, he’s in the news today for the very topic that several of you raised: his plans to start a new football league to compete with the NFL. Here are a couple of relevant passages: “It’s a pretty . . .
Rebecca Mead, whom I am proud to call a longtime friend, is a staff writer for the New Yorker. In addition to being a very good reporter, she’s also a very good stylist; this is a rare and blessed combination. She has just published her first book, One Perfect Day: The Selling of the American Wedding, which is full of . . .
Ever since this first post on organ transplants just over a year ago followed by our subsequent New York Times column on the subject, we have received many, many tips about interesting, strange, provocative, and even useful incentives to encourage more organ donation. But nothing comes close to the latest one, which was sent in by at least 8 or . . .
If you’ve ever looked at his blog, you know that Mark Cuban is perhaps the most accessible (and interesting) sports team owner/ media maven/ technology entrepreneur in history. So it was nice to see him stop by our blog to comment on a recent post about why N.B.A. sportswriters get to sit so near the court. Here was Cuban’s comment: . . .
Did you happen to catch the Miss Universe pageant on NBC last night? Me neither. It was held in Mexico City. Based on this Reuters report, it sounds like we missed a doozy of a reality show: During the evening gown parade, Miss USA, Rachel Smith, slipped on the runway and landed on her bottom, although the slip didn’t stop . . .
As someone who’s never taken an accounting course in my life, I have often thought about doing so. But I’ve always managed to find a way to put it off. There are probably a lot of people out there like me — people who never had a burning desire to learn accounting but who, given the increasing complexity of personal . . .
From an A.P. article published widely the other day: Fred Thompson, a potential Republican presidential candidate, suggested that the 1986 immigration law signed by President Reagan is to blame for the country’s illegal immigrants and he bemoaned a nation beset by “suicidal maniacs.” “Twelve million illegal immigrants later, we are now living in a nation that is beset by people . . .
Both of them would be better off if the default option were switched to opt-out as opposed to opt-in. This is hardly surprising but, sadly, it is still news. Let me explain. One of the reasons that some people don’t contribute to their 401(k) plans is because they usually have to “opt in” to the plan — i.e., actively choose . . .
One of the many reasons I love Amazon.com is the regularity with which it experiments with new features on its book pages. It is literally a dynamic website, much more so than many other sites that actually offer more fresh content. For instance, Amazon has just introduced a nifty new treatment of its customer reviews: providing a little graph that . . .
I am probably like the other 98% of Americans who know almost nothing about the libertarian Texas congressman Ron Paul, perhaps besides the fact that he’s running for President and that he seems to have a growing fringe following. So this e-mail, from a reader named Casey Hopkins, caught my eye: Why don’t you guys write about Ron Paul? 1. . . .
On his CNBC blog, sports-business wizard Darren Rovell calculates how much the first overall N.B.A. draft pick is actually worth, at least in terms of his first year, measured by increased wins and increased attendance. The answer? Quite a bit. Rovell shows that in the past 11 years, the team with the No. 1 pick had an average attendance increase . . .
There is a large body of literature on cultural bias in standardized testing. It generally has two components: 1. In some questions, white people are made to look superior to minorities. 2. In some questions, there is a presumption of knowledge that is more likely to be held by whites than minorities, providing white students with a hidden advantage. But . . .
We’ve written repeatedly on the shortage of human organs for transplantation, and the different incentives that are being offered to produce more donated organs. Among the incentives: a commemorative medal and a shorter prison term. Now a reader named Ronald Wielink writes to tell us that in the Netherlands, a funeral insurance company is offering to cut funeral costs by . . .
Back when I worked as an editor at the New York Times Magazine, it was a pretty regular occurrence to send an article up to the legal department for vetting. One of the lawyers that I dealt with there was named Adam Liptak. I liked him a great deal for two reasons: as with the other lawyers there, he always . . .
Over at MarginalRevolution, Tyler Cowen has posted a few suggestions, and is soliciting more. One of Cowen’s ideas: Allow all candidates to watch a short debate of experts — with a fraud or two thrown in — and ask them to evaluate what they just heard and why they reached the conclusion they did. He also suggests they should conduct . . .
A few days ago, I blogged about Nassim Nicholas Taleb‘s new book, The Black Swan, and solicited questions for a Q&A that NNT had agreed to answer. Here now is our inaugural user-generated Q&A. Many thanks to all of you for the good questions and observations, and thanks especially for NNT’s thoughtful replies. It seems fitting that we post this . . .
Not long ago, I wondered aloud on this blog why so many doctors write so well. The two doctors I mentioned in detail were Jerome Groopman and Atul Gawande, both of whom have new books out. For those of you interested in this subject, take note that Abigail Zuger, who is an M.D. herself, has written an article in the . . .
Now that it’s looking a bit more likely that Michael Bloomberg could maybe, perhaps, possibly run for President on a third-party ticket, you’ve got to at least entertain this bizarre ballot possibility in 2008: For U.S. President: Hillary Clinton (D-NY) Rudolph Giuliani (R-NY) Michael Bloomberg (I-NY) How nice it would be, speaking as a NYC resident, to know that regardless . . .
This is the kind of story you don’t read every day. The plot points: 1. Mayor Bloomberg of New York City sued two gun shops in Virginia, as part of his effort to stop guns being illegally imported to New York. 2. A gun-rights group called the Virginia Citizens Defense League mounted a fundraiser for the two gun shops, planning . . .
From a recent N.Y. Times article by Michael Barbaro, headlined “Less Risk Seen in Purchasing Clothes Online”: For the first time since online retailing was born a decade ago, the sales of clothing have overtaken those of computer hardware and software, suggesting that consumers have reached a new level of comfort buying merchandise on the Web. One of the merchants . . .
With global warming having become Topic No. 1 of so many discussions, to me the big question is the degree to which behavioral changes are produced on three separate levels: 1. The individual level — where change seems well underway, but probably won’t amount to all that much without major institutional/structural changes. 2. The governmental level — where change will . . .
I was in Canada much of last week, and happened to run into an off-duty Air Canada pilot. I had flown Air Canada a few times in the previous days, and told him that the experience was significantly better than on any U.S. airline. He grimaced. “Oh, it’s terrible for us, too,” he said. Then he talked about all the . . .
At this moment, a boycott of the Beijing Olympics would seem pretty unlikely. It took a Soviet invasion of Afghanistan for the U.S. and other countries to boycott the 1980 Moscow Olympics. (The Soviets repaid the favor in 1984, staying home from the Los Angeles games.) On the other hand, a lot of people around the world harbor feelings of . . .
The job of I.R.S. commissioner has been filled — Mark Everson, who left to take over the American Red Cross, has been replaced by deputy Kevin Brown — but there’s still room for more at the I.R.S. Now you can nominate yourself (or a loved one) for a three-year volunteer membership on the agency’s Information Reporting Program Advisory Committee, which . . .
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