The Berkeley psychologist Seth Roberts was good enough to guest-blog here all last week. A lot of people still have questions for him. He can be reached at shangriladiet@gmail.com; you can also click here to read about his research.
… to come hear me (Dubner) give a non-Freakonomics reading, on Mon., Sept. 26, 7:00 p.m., at the Half King. It’s an event to celebrate the publication of The Best American Crime Writing 2005, an anthology that includes a New Yorker article I wrote about a cunning silver thief. (Oops: I just showed you the free version of the article . . .
We have twice blogged — here and here — about Moodgrapher, a mood-tracking site built by Gilad Mishne at the University of Amsterdam. It tracks the blog entries of Live Journal users and aggregates their mood indicators to see how a given event (a terrorist act, a natural disaster, an election) influences societal mood. Levitt proposed that corporations might employ . . .
March 5, 2021: These bookplates are no longer available. We’re sorry for the inconvenience. Once in a while, someone writes to ask if we would autograph his or her copy of Freakonomics. And we say: sure, thanks for asking. But the logistics aren’t very smooth. A person would have to mail the book to one of us, and include a . . .
A while back, there was discussion, only half in jest, that Levitt might make a good Supreme Court Justice. Now things have gotten even crazier: he has been nominated (again, only half in jest) by the BBC to help rule the world: click here for the opening page, then the “click to start” tab and then “Economists.” (It is telling . . .
Here is the final post from our guest blogger, Seth Roberts. If you need to get up to speed on Seth’s unorthodox research with weight-loss, mood, acne, and sleep, click here (our N.Y. Times article about him), here (research extras and pix), here (the first round of reader comments), and here, here, here, here, and here for his earlier blog . . .
Here is the latest (and maybe final) post from our guest blogger, Seth Roberts. If you need to get up to speed on Seth’s unorthodox research with weight-loss, mood, acne, and sleep, click here (our N.Y. Times article about him), here (research extras and pix), here (the first round of reader comments), and here, here, here, and here for his . . .
Okay, how’s this for an example of crime prevention: transcendental meditation. Several years ago in Washington D.C., 3,000 people got together to meditate and … yes, drove drown crime throughout the city. That’s their story, at least. For all I know, this is an old story; it may also be totally insane. But it makes for interesting reading: click here . . .
Here is the latest post from our guest blogger, Seth Roberts. If you need to get up to speed on Seth’s unorthodox research with weight-loss, mood, and sleep, click here (our N.Y. Times article about him), here (research extras and pix), here (the first round of reader comments), and here, here, and here for his earlier blog postings. GUEST BLOGGER: . . .
Here’s a third post from our guest blogger, Seth Roberts, a psychology professor at Berkeley and, apparently, the next American diet guru. If you need to get up to speed on Seth’s unorthodox research with weight-loss, mood, and sleep, click here (our N.Y. Times article about him), here (research extras and pix), here (the first round of reader comments), here . . .
Freakonomics has been nominated for the inaugural Quill Awards and we would really appreciate your vote.* Click here to cast your ballot (and be prepared to wade through several screens before finding Freakonomics in the “Best Business” category). You can actually vote for it twice: as “Best Business” book and also “Book of the Year.” Be warned, however, that the . . .
Here’s another post from Seth Roberts, our guest blogger. If you need to get up to speed on Seth’s unorthodox research with weight-loss, mood, and sleep, click here (our N.Y. Times article about Seth), here (research extras and pix), here (the first round of reader comments), and here (for Seth’s first guest-blog, including comments and questions). GUEST BLOGGER: Dietary Non-Advice . . .
In yesterday’s New York Times Magazine, we wrote about a Berkeley psychology professor, Seth Roberts, whose intriguing history of self-experimentation has led to, among other things, a very interesting new diet. Click here to read the article and here for some extras, including Seth’s academic papers, photos, etc. Because there has been great interest in the article, we asked Seth . . .
Our latest New York Times Magazine column, to be published on Sun., Sept. 11, explores the work of Seth Roberts, a Berkeley psychologist who has used self-experimentation to arrive at, among other things, a diet that may prove revolutionary. Or at least very entertaining. Here is some additional information about Roberts and his work. I first learned of Roberts from . . .
In a previous blog entry, we posted a pair of slapdash haikus, one written by each of us, and asked you to guess who wrote which one. Many of you played along, and nicely, and wisely. Some of you wrote excellent haiku response, though most of those were sent to us directly via e-mail. Anyway … here are the answers: . . .
Steve Levitt is such a big deal in Chicago that he has been asked to donate an original haiku (!) for a fund-raiser on Wed., Sept. 14. So he went ahead and wrote himself some haiku. Then he felt a little funny being the only haikuist in the Freakonomics family, so he asked me to write one too. And I . . .
As we wrote in Freakonomics, Realtors are incented to use proprietary information to the disadvantage of their customers. (Don’t be so smug: you probably would too if you were a Realtor.) The National Association of Realtors once yelled at us for discussing this situation on TV. Now the N.A.R. has a new and far more powerful enemy: the U.S. Department . . .
Much has been made in the media recently of the untended corpses in New Orleans, left on the street for days on end. Aside from issues of dignity, it certainly makes you wonder about health concerns. Especially when you read this BBC report about a supposed link between human remains and mad cow disease. I have to admit that whenever . . .
Books on CD and cassette have quietly become a nice little profit center for book publishers. (So too have audio downloads, but that’s a subject for another day.) Even though audio versions sell, at best, perhaps 1 copy to every 10 copies of a hardcover book, their high price and low royalty rate enable publishers to make money. Most people . . .
My wife is a photographer who once lived and shot in Romania, Russia, Chechnya, Israel, and elsewhere. She often worked in harm’s way and almost always with the sort of reckless abandon a photographer needs in order to document tragedies and farces. So I’ve picked up a little bit about what it means to tell a story with a camera, . . .
We haven’t had all that much contact with our British publishers, Penguin U.K. But they seem startlingly proactive. First there was the billboard campaign in the London tube. Now there’s an online Freakonomics quiz. It’s true that the quiz plays pretty fast and loose with the material in our book but it would be churlish (for us at least) to . . .
I happen to be a member of the American Museum of Natural History in New York. (My son, like nearly every 5-year-old boy I know, is a dinosaur freak.) I just received an e-mail asking for feedback on a script for the AMNH’s new space show. I guess this is what life is like for museums after the Enola Gay/Smithsonian . . .
Here’s what I wrote a few weeks ago, just as we embarked on a short California book tour: Earlier in this space we asked if book ads work; now we are led to the next obvious question: how about the author’s tour? Can it possibly be worth all the money and time it takes to fly two people across the . . .
The American Beverage Association has just announced its recommendation that elementary schools no longer sell soda pop in vending machines. “Childhood obesity is a real problem,” ABA president and CEO Susan Neely told the Associated Press. (Here is the A.P. article in USA Today.) “The individual companies [represented by the ABA] have been doing several things to be part of . . .
I know, I know, I know: Wikipedia is one of the wonders of the online world. I hear this regularly, especially from young journalist friends and also in e-mails concerning Freakonomics. A casual mention in our book concerning the derivation of the Chicago Black Sox’ nickname began a debate chronicled here, a debate in which participants regularly cited the Wikipedia . . .
In light of earlier discussions here about Amazon reviewers, here’s a lovely little story out of Hollywood about fake movie reviews.
The Informatics Institute at the University of Amsterdam has built a beautiful little site that charts the mood indicators chosen by LiveJournal users. See how people reacted to the London bombings; see if people actually drink more on weekends; etc. Thanks to Eric Allam for the link.
It’s nice to see that Astros third baseman Morgan Ensberg is planning to read Freakonomics — or at least he was until a last-minute call-up to the All-Star squad — but here’s the big question: can he help us tap into any data that might help solve the myriad mysteries of modern baseball?
In a very engaging discussion on WSJ.com, Alex Tabarrok and Bryan Caplan, a pair of economists at George Mason University, show that Freakonomics is hardly the only place to find creative applications of economic research.
To “St. Cheryl,” who posted below about real-estate agents: what on earth did you mean about the sketchy practices of veterinarians? Please tell more, either here or by e-mail (levittdubner@freakonomics.com). Thanks.
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