Barry Bonds‘s baseball career, and his life in general, have been equal parts accomplishment and tumult. I won’t rehearse the details here, since anybody who cares at all is already familiar with them. The most interesting question to me is: Now what? It seems quite likely that if Bonds really wants to break Hank Aaron‘s all-time home run record of . . .
It is stunning to me how the threat of climate change has moved so swiftly from a big, simmering news story to a gigantic, omnipresent news story. One question I hear a lot, however, is this: Does big business care about climate change as much as everyone else? Judging from the pages of the Wall Street Journal, the answer is . . .
How many people read this blog? Who knows. Our hosting service says about 50,000 unique visitors come each day. That’s a lot of people — but when our traffic is analyzed by other companies, the number is considerably less. The other day, I noticed something strange. The little box in the right-hand margin of this page that lists the number . . .
We have been accused of making economics cool. But compared to this Def Poetry Jam performance by Tommy Bottoms, we are bush league. The piece is called “Basic Economics,” and to my mind it is as well-written as it is well-performed. If I were a high-school economics teacher, I’d use it in my class (although truthfully it’s more of an . . .
Here’s what showed up in the in-box today: You believe “economics is how people get what they want, or need, especially when other people want or need the same thing,” What else are you going to pull out of high school economic text books? What is even more disturbing is the large amount of readers that believe this sort of . . .
About a year ago, we wrote this article about how real-estate agents would seem to be an endangered species. The article included an interesting piece of research (by Chang-Tai Hsieh and Enrico Moretti) which showed that even during a real-estate boom, the typical agent doesn’t make a whole lot of money. Why not? Because the barriers to entry are so . . .
How dangerous is the flu? Probably more than most people think. Influenza/Pneumonia is regularly among the ten leading causes of death in the U.S. But there is more to it than that. This paper by Doug Almond makes a broad and interesting argument about the flu. By using the shock of the 1918 influenza pandemic, Almond measured the effect of . . .
We recently wrote about how some $8 billion in gift card value goes unredeemed in a given year, representing 10% of all gift card purchases. In the retail industry, this $8 billion gift is called “breakage.” State lotteries, it turns out, also rake in a bit of breakage. Here’s a N.Y. Times article about winning lottery tickets that go unclaimed, . . .
If you worry about your home being burglarized, you might want to take a look at this interview with a burglar who gives some advice about where to hide your valuables. His obvious answer: “at the bank.” But he’s got a few other pointers too, including: 1. If you do keep cash in the house, leave a little of it . . .
David Mills, a TV writer who used to write for newspapers, is regularly surprised — and irked — when newspapers and magazines misidentify black people in articles and photo captions. “I mean famous black people,” Mills writes on his Undercover Black Man blog. So he has begun a Misidentified Black Person of the Week feature, with the aim of creating . . .
Lenny “Nails” Dykstra now writes an investing column on TheStreet.com. And the rest, as they say, is commentary.
Daniel Gross, who writes good popular economics pieces for Slate, the New York Times, and sometimes New York, published a Times piece on Sunday that will cheer fans of congestion pricing, the practice of charging higher tolls when roads are busier: “[T]he $2.9 trillion fiscal 2008 budget released by President Bush on Monday contained some excellent news: $130 million in . . .
The 2007 Economics Report of the President is to be released this afternoon, and posted online here. Then at 4:30 p.m. EST, Ed Lazear, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors, will discuss the report in a conference call with … bloggers. I don’t know whether the decision to do this was made before or after it was revealed that . . .
NASCAR recently made several changes for its 2007 Nextel Cup season. Perhaps the most significant was increasing the incentive to actually win the races. Since the Nextel Cup is a points tournament, a driver can do very well by just hanging around and finishing near the top. But now, by awarding more points to the winner of each race, NASCAR . . .
In Sicily last Friday, during a soccer match between Catania and Palermo, fans rioted outside the stadium with bombs and steel pipes, resulting in the death of a police officer. As a result, most soccer matches throughout Italy this weekend will be played in empty stadiums. That’s right: fans are being barred from soccer games until the authorities can figure . . .
Here’s what it looked like then. The stats are fun, too. But here is the best page. Hat tip to James Altucher’s Daily Blog Watch. Between DBW and Stockpickr, it looks like my friend James has kinda taken over TheStreet.com. As I’ve said before, James is an amazing guy. He was going to be one of the main characters in . . .
In responding to yesterday’s post about the astronaut love triangle (or, more appropriately, “love V,” as one wise commenter put it), you all offered a number of compelling explanations for the story’s explosion. I must say, however, that I was surprised to read that so many people think of astronauts as larger-than-life heroes, only because I thought that image was . . .
I have been traveling yesterday and today, and have therefore caught more unintentional snippets of media — blaring TV’s in restaurants, hotel lobbies, airport lounges, etc. — than usual. And the same story has been on every single TV: the astronaut love triangle. First I thought it was because I’m in Houston, where Lisa Nowak began her 900-mile diapered drive. . . .
In the section in Freakonomics about online dating, we referred to some of the more specialized dating sites: ChristianSingles.com, LatinMatcher.com, USMilitarySingles.com, PlusSizeSingles.com, etc. Now there’s a new dating site that serves a shrinking but apparently underserved market: American farmers. FarmersOnly.com is “THE place for farmers, ranchers, and down-to-earth people who relate to the agricultural lifestyle to meet their match.” The . . .
Despite speculation about Rudy Giuliani’s reluctance to run for President, and skepticism that he’s a viable candidate, it looks as though he’s about ready to officially declare himself a candidate. This comes as little surprise to anyone who received the following “Team Rudy” e-mail from Brent Seaborn, a former Bush operative now putting together the Giuliani campaign team. Are Giuliani’s . . .
I read a Wall Street Journal article a few weeks ago about how one very promising form of biofuel, palm oil, is in fact having deleterious effects on the environment. In Southeast Asia, farmers cleared huge swaths of rainforest in order to create palm plantations; they also drained and burned off peatland to create arable land, generating massive smoke pollution. . . .
A friend spotted this book in a store the other day, and thought it bore a certain resemblance to another book he’d seen. I have to say, I don’t get what a dollar bill has to do with an apple. But I was particularly tickled by the title: This is not the first book cover that’s a bit familiar. There . . .
They are among the celebrities featured in a new ad campaign by the Wall Street Journal. Here’s the story — which, unfortunately, doesn’t mention Levitt. But trust me, he’ll show up in the campaign. Remember when Levitt blogged about a very, very strange photo shoot? This is the one. In exchange for appearing in the ad, Levitt (and I assume . . .
Whenever I get change for a dollar, I ask the cashier to keep the pennies. They aren’t worth my time, or hers, or yours. Sometimes the cashier refuses for bookkeeping purposes, in which case I politely accept the pennies and then throw them in the nearest trash can. (Is this illegal? Maybe so, but then so is throwing pennies into . . .
When I first read this headline — “Doctors Warn of Poisoning From Hand Gels” — I assumed the accompanying Reuters article was about the potential danger of becoming too dependent on alcohol-based disinfectants like Purell. (Here’s an article we wrote about hospital-acquired infections and the pressing need for medical personnel to clean their hands; here’s a more recent development.) The . . .
That is my conclusion after seeing this Google Book Search Page for a book called How to Build Your Own Furniture. The page lists three “Related Books,” including How to Make Your Own Recreation and Hobby Rooms, How to Build Your Cabin or Modern Vacation Home, and … Freakonomics. Huh? I am trying to think of what may have fooled . . .
Here’s a new website, from the Dept. of Health & Human Services, that lets you see how your hospital compares to others. Here’s another new site, from the Project for Excellence in Journalism, that lets you see how a particular news story is covered in various media outlets. And if you just need to complain about something, here are some . . .
Even though Americans may be less concerned with global warming than people in many other countries, it is amazing how the subject has recently become so omnipresent. The media is brimming with global warming stories every day, from a variety of angles: environmental, economic, political, etc. How did this happen? How has such a sweeping, complex, controversial issue become such . . .
There’s a new John Tierney column out today, a good one, on doomsday predictions (mostly concerning biological weapons), and who’s backing up their predictions with cash (including Tierney) on LongBets.org. There’s more information on Tierney’s blog, including a link to this interesting essay by Steven Pinker about the overall decline of violence in modern times.
The other day, I posted here about a reader’s complaint that the San Francisco Chronicle turned into a podcast. It was a voicemail message from a man who objected, very strenuously, to some redundant language in a Chronicle article. It was the first installment of a new audio feature the Chronicle is calling “Correct Me if I’m Wrong,” and as . . .
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