A few days a week, I bring my daughter to nursery school on the East Side of Manhattan. (On the other days, I bring my son to kindergarten; next year, they will blessedly attend the same school.) We live on the West Side, and usually take the bus across town. It is a busy time of day. At the bus . . .
America’s universities are producing an awful lot of economists these days. Too many? Well, if Levitt is successful in getting rid of tenure (don’t bet on it), there will certainly be some teaching openings. Otherwise, newly minted economists may wish to consider the career path of David Teece. Teece is a 58-year-old Berkeley professor who, noting that the legal system . . .
After misinterpreting the data on the side-impact crash tests it ran on child car seats, Consumer Reports is changing its methodology on such tests, enlisting the help of experts in the field instead of acting with total independence. (Here is our earlier take on child car seats.)
Here’s a very interesting review of a very interesting-sounding new book on Mark Twain, by Peter Krass. The review, published in the Wall Street Journal, was written by one of my favorite business journalists, Roger Lowenstein, who has written good books on Warren Buffett and Long-Term Capital Management and good recent articles on immigration and on the history of the . . .
Is illegal downloading responsible for the music industry’s woes? Felix Oberholzer-Gee and Koleman Strumpf say nope. The I.R.S. will give you a pile of money if you help them catch a big tax cheat. Too bad they weren’t this generous with John Szilagyi, who was one of their own. These three guys look pretty thrilled to have produced the first . . .
Elizabeth Wurtzel, the author of Prozac Nation and Bitch, now attends Yale Law School, where she has learned to hate AutoAdmit, the online university blab shack. As with many online slanders, the ones on AutoAdmit tend to molder for a long time, which means that a newly minted lawyer may have to deal with an unseemly Google fingerprint (which, unlike . . .
If you are going to murder someone, be sure to not leave your fingerprints behind all over Google, as this woman apparently did. Her searches included “how to commit murder,” “undetectable poisons,” and “fatal digoxin doses,” as well as searches on local gun laws. And while I don’t mean to heap even more dishonor on Walgreens, guess where she bought . . .
I assume that I was not the only person who was astounded when some details of Khalid Sheik Mohammed’s confession were made public the other day. Although there are many reasons to doubt the veracity of his claims, if he is responsible for even half of what he says, how much does it change the American perception of the ongoing . . .
In a post yesterday, I asked why people comment on blogs. Not surprisingly, there were a lot of comments on the post. To summarize: 1. A great many of you don’t want to comment unless you have something original and worthwhile to say. Also, it’s time-consuming to comment at all, much less wade through the previous comments to make sure . . .
We wrote recently about identity thieves. One of them is probably already working on this guy — a lottery winner who had the misfortune of having his picture published in the local newspaper, a picture in which all his personal information was visible, including his Social Security Number. (Hat tip: Jim Romenesko)
On most websites or blogs, the ratio of readers to commenters is gigantic. On this blog, a post that garners 40 or 50 comments is considered quite a bit, even though there are many thousands of readers. The stream of comments can take many shapes, depending on the nature of the post. And, once again depending on the nature of . . .
Several weeks ago, I was talking to a physician in Houston, the sort of older gentleman family doctor you don’t see much of anymore. His name is Cyril Wolf. He’s originally from South Africa, but other than that, he struck me as the quintessential American general practitioner of decades past. I’d asked him a variety of questions — what’s changed . . .
In the U.K., it’s been discovered that five percent of medical-school applicants cheat on their application forms by plagiarizing material in their personal essays. It is hardly news, of course, that students will cheat (or, for that matter, teachers). Consider the following snapshot from Google Trends, which compares search queries for “term paper” (in blue) and “animal rights” (in red). . . .
A while back, I posted here about the San Francisco Chronicle‘s new audio feature called “Correct Me If I’m Wrong,” which turns irate readers’ voicemail messages into brief podcasts. The first podcast featured a caller who was deeply disturbed by the Chronicle‘s use of the seemingly redundant phrase “pilotless drone.” This first message was so over-the-top that I wondered if . . .
That is the proposal being considered in the South Carolina Senate. Prisoners would receive up to 180 days of time served for donating an organ or bone marrow. The following exchange of quotes from an A.P. article pretty much sums up the positions of nearly every debate over how organ donation should be incentivized: Mary Jo Cagle, chief medical officer . . .
The Times has just announced that college students (or, for that matter, anyone with an .edu e-mail suffix) can have free access to the entire contents of the newspaper’s website, including the previously gated TimesSelect material. This strikes me as a huge move, and one that will reverberate throughout every discussion of the new business model/s for journalism. [Addendum: As . . .
The other day, I wrote to say that I’d be warming up for Bill Clinton, again, and solicited your questions for him — many of which, as you can see here, were pretty good. I was particularly fond of this one, from “BennyM”: Does the American public get such lackluster politicians because we’re so cynical and disengaged? … or… drumroll . . .
Is this a safer version of Purell? At least people probably won’t drink it. Following on this discussion of remotely piloted aircraft, here is news of a tamper-proof autopilot system designed to thwart terrorists. More advice from a burglar on where not to hide your money, guns, or drugs. Following on this discussion of household urinals, here is one economist’s . . .
Our Chinese publisher has sent along word that Freakonomics has won an award in China. Here is the certificate. According to Jesse Coffino-Greenberg, a Chinese translator friend, it says: Certificate of Honor Guangdong Economics Publishing House The publishers of “Freakonomics” are hereby awarded the 2006 “New Path Prize” for finance publications. Jesse explained that he came up with “New Path . . .
That is the question we ask in our most recent column in the New York Times Magazine. Along the way, we try to clear up some misconceptions about the subject, and get a guided tour of a hacker chat room where credit-card numbers, passwords, and PIN’s are bought and sold. Below is some of the research cited in the Times . . .
I am giving a lecture later today (though not at TED) and the speaker immediately after me is President Clinton. I’ve warmed up for him before. I realize this is short notice, but: if I have the chance to chat with him for a few minutes before his talk, what do you think I should ask him? Or, I guess . . .
I believe that my daughter Anya, who just turned five, may turn out to be a philosopher. (I know, there isn’t much money in philosophy, but the thought does warm my heart.) I base this suspicion on something she said the other night while she, I, and her six-year-old brother Solomon were setting up for a massive Playmobil battle. She . . .
A reader named Kevin Cornwell, who has his own blog here, wrote us the other day about the forthcoming book The Baseball Economist. It’s by J.C. Bradbury, an economist at Kennesaw State University who writes the baseball blog Sabernomics. (I love that a baseball economist teaches at a university named for the same Georgia mountain for whom the first baseball . . .
I used to have a problem, but a friend of mine helped me with it. He didn’t know he was helping me; in fact, he wasn’t even my friend when this problem first cropped up. So, to clarify: he’s a new friend who helped me solve an old problem. My problem was this: I often record interviews on an Olympus . . .
In the U.K., there are plans afoot to charge a higher fee to park a larger car, even in your own driveway. Remember Swivel, the data mashup site we blogged about? Here’s another new data visualization site, called ManyEyes, run by IBM’s Visual Communications Lab. And here’s a thoughtful review of ManyEyes vs. Swivel. Standardized test scores in Illinois are . . .
A reader named Pete Dignan has noted that we tend to write pretty often about how people are afraid of things. In fact, that was the very theme of a recent 20/20 special to which I contributed. So he sent a link to this song, “Afraid,” by the band Waking Rothko. “The song says pretty much what you do,” Dignan . . .
A study just published in JAMA put four groups of overweight, premenopausal women on four different diets: Atkins, Ornish, Zone, and LEARN. The winner? Atkins, by a mile — in terms of weight loss as well as risk factors.
We are very fortunate to get some incredibly interesting and perceptive mail from readers. Occasionally, we share these queries (like here and here). We also get some hardcore snark, and we sometimes share those too (like this recent one). An e-mail that showed up the other day was so interesting that I wrote back to ask if I could simply . . .
I blogged recently about a Def Poetry Jam piece by Tommy Bottoms called “Basic Economics.” Below, thanks to the transcription diligence of Nicole (remember her? she wrote this very good blog post about predictive-text errors), are the lyrics of “Basic Economics.” There were a few phrases she couldn’t make out, each of which are marked with a “TK.” That’s journalism . . .
New York Senator Chuck Schumer’s new book, Positively American, isn’t selling very well. As of this writing, it is ranked #3,869 on Amazon.com, which probably translates into 2 or 3 books sold a day. It must be a little disappointing for someone as ambitious as Schumer to see his fellow Democratic senator Barack Obama selling that many books every second. . . .
You want to listen to Freakonomics Radio? That’s great! Most people use a podcast app on their smartphone. It’s free (with the purchase of a phone, of course). Looking for more guidance? We’ve got you covered.
Stay up-to-date on all our shows. We promise no spam.
