John Steele Gordon writes great historical non-fiction; his last book was Empire of Wealth: The Epic History of American Economic Power. Among many other things, he discusses how it was the Erie Canal that really turned New York City into the center of American capitalism, bringing crops and goods from the Midwest to be shipped to Europe and elsewhere. In . . .
There is a Shell station in San Francisco, at Sixth and Harrison, that was recently charging $4.33 a gallon for regular gas and $4.43 for premium. Across the street is a Chevron station that charges about 70 cents less per gallon. Can you guess why? I seriously doubt it. You might think it has something to do with Shell vs. . . .
I have been alerted that my recent post on PowerPoint and its failings would have been richer had it referenced the earlier work on the subject by Seth Godin. He’s been trying to help PowerPoint people help themselves for years. His e-book on the subject, reproduced here on his blog, is called Really Bad PowerPoint. As with many good ideas, . . .
Even though I try hard to avoid meetings in general, and business meetings in particular, I have sat through my share of PowerPoint presentations. In general, I hate them. There are at least two big problems with PowerPoint presentations. The first is that the speaker, because he’s got the visual crutch of the slide show, doesn’t work very hard to . . .
When I saw the first headlines, I thought it was some kind of a prank, but it’s not: the Vatican has issued a document concerning “the pastoral care of road users,” which includes a sober discussion of “the phenomenon of human mobility.” It also contains a section called “Drivers’ ‘Ten Commandments,’” which has been the focus of tons of news . . .
I recently flew business class on Northwest Airlines. When it came time for dinner to be served, I decided I would decline dinner for three reasons: 1. I had eaten just a few hours earlier. 2. I was busy working and I didn’t want to put away all the papers I had spread out on my tray. 3. I caught . . .
Last week, I blogged about the conservative/Christian website Conservapedia, one of several Wikipedia copycats. Another of these sites is Uncyclopedia, which pokes fun at Wikipedia’s credibility issues by fudging practically every fact. The site is an impressive piece of mockery, perhaps best judged by its very excellent entry on Freakonomics — a book written, per Uncyclopedia, by “economist Bill Reichstag . . .
After two years of submitting cartoons and getting nothing but rejection, Robert Mankoff finally succeeded in selling his first cartoon to The New Yorker in the 1970’s. He went on to become one of the magazine’s premiere cartoonists and ultimately its cartoon editor. He also had the clever idea of founding The Cartoon Bank, a company meant to syndicate and . . .
The answer is: they both have Cyril Wolf as a patron. Who? You may remember Wolf as the gentlemanly doctor in Houston who shared with me his research on how some drug-store chains charge 1000% more for generic prescriptions than Costco and Sam’s Club. (Yes, 1000% more.) The reason he was so distraught by this fact is that he has . . .
Yesterday, we posted a Q&A with economist and all-around smart guy Steve Landsburg, who addresses a lot of everyday riddles in his writing. Sometime in the next few days, we’ll be posting excerpts from the economist Robert Frank‘s new book The Economic Naturalist. So far, I am loving Frank’s book. It poses a series of questions about small, real-world riddles, . . .
It’s been a few years since I bought any “Thomas and Friends” toys for my son, so I don’t think any of the approximately 18,000 trains he owns are part of the recall that was just announced. It covers toys sold in the U.S. from Jan. 2005 through June 2007; they are thought to contain lead paint, and they were . . .
Google’s new Street View feature has caused a predictable sort of hubbub. Privacy advocates are upset; one woman freaked out when she could see her cat through the window of her house; one man was caught peeing by the side of the road. (We interviewed Google’s project manager on our site; his answers, hardly earth-shaking, were still interesting.) I understand . . .
Steven Landsburg is not known for having temperate opinions. An economics professor at the University of Rochester and a prolific writer, Landsburg regularly raises provocative theories in his Slate column: women choke under pressure, e.g., or miserliness is a form of generosity. He is the author of the books Armchair Economist and Fair Play, which are in some ways direct . . .
Anyone who cares about autism, and particularly the supposed spike in autism in recent years, would do well to read this very informative, cogent, and non-hysterical OpEd by Paul T. Shattuck and Maureen Durkin. It is written on the occasion of a case before the U.S. Court of Federal Claims that’s investigating whether autism is linked to childhood vaccinations, as . . .
Have you all heard of Conservapedia? It bills itself as “a conservative encyclopedia you can trust,” and it is pretty fascinating. It has a strong pro-Christian, anti-liberal (and especially anti-N.Y. Times) bent, and is just one of several user-run encyclopedias that have taken root in response (or tribute) to Wikipedia. (Here are our previous posts on Wikipedia). These also include . . .
Over at the very, very compelling Strange Maps site (warning: do not click unless you have an hour to kill) is a map of the U.S. with each state renamed for a country with a similar GDP. In case you’re wondering where the really big countries are, here’s another map, in which Japan gobbles up our entire midsection and New . . .
We are still getting e-mails, like this one, concerning our New York Times column a while back about the leisure/work distinctions in “hobbies” like gardening, cooking, knitting, etc. But the following message, from economist Shoshana Grossbard, is easily among the best. She teaches at San Diego State and is the founding editor of the Review of Economics of the Household. . . .
What’s wrong with this picture? A contest sponsored by Time Out New York to pick the book that is “most essential to life — and cocktail conversation — in New York City” has reached the semifinals. Freakonomics is still in the running, pitted this week against Jane Austen‘s Pride and Prejudice. Talk about apples and oranges. If we happen to . . .
As every writer knows, beginnings are hard. Endings are perhaps even harder. So how hard is it to satisfyingly end a series like The Sopranos? If you like the show, you already know what happened; if you don’t like it, you don’t care. But one measure of just how unsatisfying many viewers found the finale can be gained by conducting . . .
Itzhak Ben-David is a Ph.D. candidate in finance at the University of Chicago’s Graduate School of Business. (Levitt is one of his dissertation advisors.) While pursuing his original research idea — the degree to which housing prices efficiently incorporate anticipated tax increases — Ben-David stumbled upon a slightly juicier topic: a real-estate sleight of hand known as the “cashback transaction,” . . .
We ran Part 1 of our Q&A with Mark Cuban yesterday; here is Part 2. Thanks again to all of you for the good questions and to Mark for the great answers. Q: I loved your early bet on HD entertainment – it was spot-on. What industries do you see on the horizon that offer similarly explosive potential? A: If . . .
We’ve got a column appearing in the June 10 issue of the New York Times Magazine, which is a special issue on the U.S. wealth divide. Our piece deals with some interesting new research on real-estate sales (more on this later today). I know what you’re thinking: more Realtor bashing! Well, no. Even though we’ve written various things about the . . .
My guess is that Mark Cuban doesn’t sleep very much. In addition to his various entrepreneurial activities, including an attempt to start up a new pro football league, he also managed to respond to a great many of the questions you all posed on our superfreako user-generated Q&A. (The only thing missing is a question about who he wants to . . .
Richard Brodie, a poker player best known as the original author of Microsoft Word, had a string of obscenely good luck on some video poker machines at Caesars Palace — and then, Brodie writes, he was asked by Caesars parent company Harrah’s to never again darken the door of any Harrah’s property. Yikes. Brodie is obviously much more of a . . .
The introduction of new pay-by-weight trash charges in Ireland seems to have produced a strange and troubling effect: an increase in burn victims at St. James Hospital in Dublin. Huh? The theory is that people wanted to avoid having to pay for all their trash so instead they burned it in their backyards. Gary Finnegan, editor of Irish Medical News, . . .
On the InTrade prediction market site, John Edwards has fallen behind the undeclared Al Gore. Here is Edwards’s recent price chart: And here is Gore’s: Note how far Gore has fallen since the Oscar hubbub. Note, also, that Gore remains (fairly) adamant that he won’t run. On the GOP side, meanwhile, the not-quite-yet-declared Fred Thompson has just about caught up . . .
Gene Weingarten of the Washington Post has a funny take on the notion of outsourced journalism, taking off on a real story — about Indian journalists covering town meetings in Pasadena — that we blogged about here. You may recall that Weingarten is the same journalist who wrote the fantastic piece about world-class violinist Joshua Bell‘s undercover concert in a . . .
There’s an incredibly interesting Q&A in today’s Wall Street Journal with Arthur D. Levinson, the CEO of biotech pioneer Genentech, mostly concerning the topic of the company’s cancer drugs. (There is a lot of interesting cancer news in the papers these days, mainly because of the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology in Chicago.) Levinson regularly deals . . .
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 . . .
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