A few months ago, I was invited to give the convocation address at my undergraduate alma mater, Appalachian State University. The previous December, A.S.U. had won the NCAA Division I-AA national football championship, and I cannot tell you how many people swore to me that A.S.U. would repeat this year. Sure, sure, sure, I thought. Winning any kind of championship . . .
The Jewish festival of Hanukkah, meant to commemorate a long-ago miracle, begins tonight at sundown. What is the miracle being celebrated? Not, as you might think, the Maccabees’ very unlikely military victories against the mighty Syrian-Greek army. While that used to be the miracle that Hanukkah was built around, many years ago and for a relatively short time, it was . . .
Alex Tabarrok over at Marginal Revolution points out that Diane Coyle has listed Freakonomics as one of the most overrated books of the year. The list appeared in a British magazine called Prospect. Here’s what Coyle had to say about Freakonomics: “Economics as freak show. Depressingly, this seems to be the only way to gain a wider audience for the . . .
I posted here yesterday about the controversy over Jimmy Carter’s new book Palestine Peace Not Apartheid. I thought about, but did not comment upon, the book’s title. Rendered as it is, without any punctuation, it is an odd title. My eye very much wants to put a colon after “Palestine” and/or a comma after “Peace.” But it is what it . . .
Jimmy Carter’s new book about Israel is provoking criticism on two fronts. The first issue is that he’s accusing Israel of practicing “apartheid” against the Palestinians, a charge that is hardly new but which doesn’t usually come from a former U.S. president. (Carter’s position is hardly subtle; the book’s title is Palestine Peace Not Apartheid.) This has prompted criticism from . . .
Roland Fryer is a very enterprising young economist at Harvard whose early work, much of it in collaboration with Steve Levitt, is featured in Freakonomics. Roland’s creativity is not limited to academic economics. A while back, he told me his idea for opening a bar in Cambridge where an electronic tote board would list the prices of the beers and . . .
A reader named Gerard Mulligan was good enough to let us know that a 1983 novel he was reading, Scenes From Later Life by William Cooper, contains a passage that, if the section from Freakonomics about real-estate agents were ever made into a film, could practically serve as the script. (If the film were British, that is.) Check out the . . .
… you might want to look at Darren Rovell’s new blog on CNBC.com. I know Darren a little bit and he is a killer reporter. He used to be at ESPN and recently made the jump to CNBC. He also wrote a pretty good book about Gatorade.
The provincial government of Ontario has passed a law whereby a teenager loses his license if he drops out of school. Pretty clever. Dropping out would probably only be about 1/3 as appealing if you couldn’t drive. There are very narrow provisions in the law — not many kids would really lose their licenses, and they’d get them back when . . .
Martin Nodell, creator of the Green Lantern comic-book superhero, has died at 91. Nodell used “Mart Dellon” as his nom-de-comic. Nodell, like just about every other creator of the golden era superheroes, was Jewish. And a lot of those superheroes had Jewish shadings. Here’s what I wrote on the subject in my book Confessions of a Hero-Worshiper: Superman, Batman, the . . .
You people may be more powerful than you know, at least in terms of viral web behavior. A couple weeks ago, I posted here about a funny video on YouTube that shows a large white poodle bouncing (or “stotting,” as I was informed by a commenter) through Washington Square Park in NYC. The poodle is owned, and being walked, by . . .
Here’s a holiday story that is sure to warm the coldest heart. On this website of Dallas call girls (Warning: adult content), an escort named Kayla has rallied her friends to put together a special raffle. As she explains in the note below, the winner of the raffle ($50 per entry, or 3 for $100) gets a session with not . . .
Who doesn’t need a good alibi every now and then? It helps, of course, if the alibi is legit. But if that’s too much to ask for, then AlibiNetwork.com is there to help you: “Alibi Network is a cutting edge full service agency providing alibis and excused absences as well as assistance with a variety of sensitive issues. … We . . .
According to Thomas B. Edsall, guest OpEd columnist in the New York Times: 1. She is a woman. 2. Democrats tend to pulverize their leading candidates in primaries. 3. She is a woman. Edsall doesn’t put it in those words exactly, but that’s the gist. And he offers some compelling evidence from the recent midterm elections: Evaluations of men and . . .
That was the question posed by the very first single-topic issue of the New York Times Magazine, which I had the privilege of editing, more than 10 years ago. (Now there are a panoply of single-topic issues each year, including the wonderful Ideas Issue of this past Sunday.) The thought back then was that New York City was in full . . .
We know you like to play contests (like this one and this one and this one). And we know that at least some of you have a fierce literary bent (as judged by your response to this post and this one and this one). So there should be at least some interest in the following: a six-word memoir contest. That’s . . .
Our post last week about the possibility of pilotless commercial airplanes produced a vigorous, fascinating, and civil discussion in the comments. Here’s a bit of followup for those of you who are still interested. My brother the pilot, a.k.a. Joe Dubner, wrote to tell me that “about 80% of commercial airliner takeoffs and landings are already remote-controlled” is not quite . . .
According to an A.P. report, the recent Nextel Cup champion Jimmie Johnson broke his left wrist after falling out of a golf cart. “I was in a golf cart,” Johnson said, “and the driver took a sharp turn.” Fortunately, it was Johnson’s non-shifting hand, “and he should be able to participate in pre-season testing at Daytona next month.” NASCAR just . . .
One of my favorite types of stories to write about is when people say one thing and do another. This gap between what economics call “declared preferences” (what you say you’ll do) and “expressed preferences” (what you actually do) does not necessarily constitute a lie. Sometimes we say we will do something with the full belief that we will do . . .
Here’s the story. Our previous posts about autism can be found here and here and here.
Last night the Pittsburgh Steelers hosted the Cleveland Browns, a game between two losing teams on a freezing Thursday night. But I couldn’t wait to watch it. The Steelers have meant a lot to me for a very long time, and my 6-year-old son Solomon has become as devoted to them as he is devoted to his family, school, and . . .
Yesterday, after posting this item wondering whether 9/11 had begun to diminish our collective remembrance of Pearl Harbor Day, I wrote to Bill Tancer of Hitwise.com. I asked Bill to take a look at his search-query data for any insights into this subject. Here’s his reply: Unfortunately, I only have access to 24 mo. of historical data. However, the question . . .
That’s what Mark Leibowitz, one of our readers, wants to know: “Public men’s rooms have a mix of urinals and toilets, but private homes only have toilets. At first I thought it was simply a matter of space, but even when there’s room for a second installation the second choice is always a bidet rather than a urinal. Urinals use . . .
Because it might be a lifesaver: a soldier can spray the Silly String to look for trip wires around bombs. According to this A.P. article, “Before entering a building, troops squirt the plastic goo, which can shoot strands about 10 to 12 feet, across the room. If it falls to the ground, no trip wires. If it hangs in the . . .
When I blogged yesterday about Swivel.com, the site had nothing but a “coming soon” banner. Well, one day later, Swivel has gone live. There’s not too much there yet, and things seem a little buggy, but it’s well worth a look. One commenter on the original post wrote: “Coming soon” on a website is similar to “Closed for renovations” in . . .
Duncan Foley, a professor of economics at the New School for Social Research, has written an interesting-sounding book: Adam’s Fallacy: A Guide to Economic Theology. The Adam of the title is not, as the subtitle might lead you to believe, the biblical Adam; it is Adam Smith. And the fallacy is that “the pursuit of self-interest is guided by objective . . .
Levitt was on The Colbert Report last night, and did great. What follows sounds like it comes from The Colbert Report or The Daily Show but, unfortunately, comes from a N.Y. Times report by Nazila Fathi, “Iran Invites Scholars to Assess Holocaust as History or Fiction”: The Iranian authorities, who have frequently accused the Jews of distorting history to legitimize . . .
Remember yesterday’s item about how the N.Y. Times and Wall Street Journal published their very, very different editorials on John Bolton’s resignation? In answer to a Brazilian commenter’s question, the Times is the liberal paper (and therefore anti-Bolton) while the Journal, and most famously its editorial page, is the conservative one. In today’s papers, there is evidence that those irreconcilable . . .
We’ve just learned that Freakonomics — a.k.a. Фрикономика — has been published in Russian. Here’s more information. I know very little Russian but among my most prized books are a handful of Isaac Bashevis Singer novels in Russian that I picked up while visiting Moscow several years back. And even though my elders were chased out of Russia a few . . .
In case you missed Levitt’s weekend(!) blog quiz or late-night clarification, let it be said plainly and loudly here that yes, Steve Levitt will be appearing on The Colbert Report tonight (Tues., Dec. 5), at 11:30 p.m. Eastern/10:30 p.m. Central. I would gladly go watch Levitt at the taping — I did when he was on Jon Stewart’s Daily Show, . . .
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