The contest question was pretty simple:
I was in California the other day and saw someone doing something that I haven’t seen done in a good while. I used to do it myself quite a bit, when I was in college, largely out of necessity. What was it?
A new working paper gives tangible evidence that the measures taken by Beijing to reduce air pollution during the 2008 Olympics worked, but that more than half the effect faded away by October 2009.
I was in California the other day and saw someone doing something that I haven’t seen done in a good while. I used to do it myself quite a bit, when I was in college, largely out of necessity. What was it?
A reader named Shira Bannerman writes:
I just spent the week at SXSW, an indie music festival in Austin, TX, that attracted around 230,00 attendees. (Well, first it’s an interactive media and movie fest, but I only went for the music fest portion. I’d also specifically like to mention that my experience is only reflective of the free concerts, as I didn’t pay for a wristband and don’t know if that experience is much different.)
Some people really are addicted to foods in a similar way others might be dependent on certain substances, like addictive illegal or prescriptions drugs, or alcohol, researchers from Yale University revealed in Archives of General Psychiatry. Those with an addictive-like behavior seem to have more neural activity in specific parts of the brain in the same way substance-dependent people appear to have, the authors explained.
More here.
So… it turns out that many of our Freakonomics podcast guests (not to mention the host) begin their sentences with the word So. Is this an odd coincidence, a tic common only among our radio guests? Or is there something about being recorded that brings it out?
What’s the best incentive for playing the lottery? Traditionally, state lotteries have tried appealing to our sense of greed. But Washington state is trying the novel idea of appealing to our altruistic side.
According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s (NHTSA) early projections, the number of traffic fatalities fell three percent between 2009 and 2010, from 33,808 to 32,788. Continuing what is now a 25 percent drop since 2005, when there were 43,510 traffic deaths.
In the Wall Street Journal, energy guru Daniel Yergin writes of the massive promise of shale gas. It’s the subject of the current cover story of TIME: “This Rock Could Power the World.” And this is what President Obama said in his energy-policy speech at Georgetown last week: Now, in terms of new sources of energy, we have a few . . .
From the Economist: “To avoide the dynasties that have misruled many Latin American countries, Guatemala’s constitution forbids relatives of the incumbent president and vice-president from running for high office. This clause had seemed to scotch the chances of Sandra Torres, the country’s ambitious first lady, becoming its first presidenta. But on March 21st she and her husband, Álvaro Colom, announced a novel way to sidestep the rules: they filed for divorce.”
We talk to a U.S. Geological Survey physicist about the science — and folly — of predicting earthquakes. There are lots of known knowns; and, fortunately, not too many unknown unknowns. But it’s the known unknowns — the timing of the next Big One — that are the most dangerous.
Maybe Dyson should be making smartphones too, eh? They are so much fun to use that I wonder if people will be more likely to wash their hands in airport restrooms …
You know the bromide: winners never quit and quitters never win. To which we say: are you sure?
We’re working on an hour-long Freakonomics Radio show about the upside of quitting. Sometimes quitting is strategic, and it might even be the best possible thing you can do. (I may be a bit biased, as I’ve done some major-league quitting in my life and am generally happier for it.) It’s all about opportunity cost: the time and resources you spend doing one thing can’t be spent doing another. So when do you quit the one and start the other?
As food companies see inflation creeping higher this summer, many are downsizing, reducing the amount of food in their packages but keeping prices–and often–the size of the box, unchanged.
Last week, I asked for your advice. I was taking my family (kids are 10 and 9) on their first trip to D.C., and wanted some tips. Your suggestions were fantastic, and it was too bad I could only follow up on a fraction of them. We had a great time (in only 2.5 days). The highlight was a White . . .
A reader named Florian Kern writes from Germany: “I was listening the other day to your very interesting podcast on memory and pain. Yesterday, then, I watched the incredibly boring soccer game between Germany and Kazakhstan.”
One of the hour-long Freakonomics Radio shows we’re currently producing is about prediction — the science behind it, the human need for it, the folly it often produces.
One person you’ll likely hear from in the program is Philip Tetlock, a psychologist at Penn and author of the deservedly well-regarded book Expert Political Judgment. It is a rigorous romp through the minefield of expert prediction, and essentially argues that the words “expert” and “prediction” should almost never occupy the same sentence.
In the Times, Sam Grobar has written a great article — a great screed, really — about how much people love to complain about their smartphones even though they accomplish so much for so little cost.
New research by an FDA economist shows that overweight adolescents who are surrounded by overweight family and friends, don’t consider themselves to be overweight.
Back in 2006, Virginia Commonwealth University launched a program to help acclimate new students, including requiring all incoming freshman to read the same book. Guess which book VCU chose as its inaugural “summer read”?
Fire deaths in the U.S. have fallen 90 percent over the past 100 years, a great and greatly underappreciated gain. How did it happen — and could we ever get to zero?
E-books are growing like crazy. Most of the complaining you may have read is from publishers– that it will be ever harder to stay solvent in an e-book world. But it’s actually authors, not publishers, who take the biggest hit.
We’ll be spending a couple of days this week in Washington, D.C. It’ll be my kids’ first trip. Am looking for non-obvious things to do and good things to eat as well. Best suggestion wins a piece of Freakonomics swag!
A Forbes.com article by Jeff Bercovici discusses the New York Times‘s plan to shut down a rogue Twitter feed called FreeNYTimes, which is meant to circumvent the Times‘s upcoming metered model (some people call it a paywall). As Bercovici writes: It’s clever, but it’s not kosher. “We have asked Twitter to disable this feed as it is in violation of . . .
I like Family Guy and I like watching TV with my kids, but I do not like watching Family Guy with my kids. What are your bad combinations?
The Three Mile Island nuclear-power accident in 1979 coincided almost perfectly with the release of The China Syndrome, a Hollywood film about a nuclear meltdown. As we once wrote, this pairing helped gel American sentiment against nuclear power. Several other nations, meanwhile, kept on building nuclear-power plants, Japan among the leaders. Now, how will the earthquake/tsunami-damaged nuclear plant in Fukushima . . .
There are a growing number of churches in the U.S. that can no longer afford their upkeep, as costs are outpacing collections. In Europe, some churches have turned into techno-dance clubs. Would that work here?
For decades, G.D.P. has been the yardstick for measuring living standards around the world. Martha Nussbaum would rather use something that actually works.
If you’re the kind of sports stat-head who loves that the Bill James movement has become mainstream in baseball, and you wonder why basketball doesn’t pay more attention to analytics, you may be pleased to read this article and this one about the annual Sports Analytics Conference at MIT Sloan.
That’s the question posed in a new working paper by Patricia M. Anderson, Kristin F. Butcher, and Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach. What would the mechanism/s be? “Schools facing increased pressures to produce academic outcomes may reallocate their efforts in ways that have unintended consequences for children’s health. For example, schools may cut back on recess and physical education in favor of increasing time on tested subjects.”
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