Despite charges that it simply wants to grab web traffic, Time.com has bravely gone ahead with its second annual list of the Top 25 blogs on the web. And guess who made the list? Yep. For the second straight year. We’d like to thank the Academy … Seriously, we are flattered and thankful. Thanks especially to our excellent contributors and . . .
The notion of micropayments — a pay-per-click/download web model — is hardly a new one. But as a business model it hasn’t exactly caught fire, or even generated more than an occasional spark. Lately, however, the journalism community has become obsessed with the idea. This is what happens when an existing business model begins to collapse: alternative models are desperately . . .
Whatever we end up calling this recession/depression, I think we can safely name one small part of it: The Great Giveback. There seems to be a rebate fever among firms trying hard to keep their customers happy, or keep their customers at all. JetBlue just announced it will give full ticket refunds to customers who lose their jobs. A few . . .
We recently solicited your suggestions for a new six-word motto for the U.S. (Yes, this is a reprise of last year’s contest.) As always, you came through brilliantly, with more than 300 submissions. Here are our choices for the six finalists: 1. Consumption’s the Cure That Ails Us. (Submitted by Quin.) 2. We Will Get It Right, Eventually. (Herb) 3. . . .
I have nothing against Abraham Lincoln — quite admire him, in fact — but I do think the penny has long, long, long outlived its usefulness.
I have said this time and again and, having been woefully ineffective in bringing about its end, vowed to shut up about it.
Last week, we solicited your questions for Simon Rogers, the owner of the talent and modeling agency UglyNY. In his answers below, Rogers discusses, among other topics, why George Clooney probably earns more than William H. Macy and why finding ugly talent is harder than it seems. You’ll find more photos of his clients throughout this post. (You will be . . .
Interesting piece here by Washington Post columnist Steven Pearlstein about a relatively small North Carolina bank called Citizens South, which avoided bad loans, has remained profitable, and then applied for and won $20.5 million in TARP bailout funds. Writing on the eve of the testimony by eight gigantic bankers before the House Financial Services Committee, Pearlstein lauds Citizens South and . . .
Today, as you’ve probably heard, is the 200th anniversary of both Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin. Lincoln always gets lots of ink, so it’s especially nice to see all the attention being paid to Darwin; this piece is particularly good.
As evidenced by this chart from the betting site Intrade, the probability of Slumdog Millionaire winning the Oscar for Best Picture has risen over the past two months right along with the probability that 2009 will be a year of recession (i.e., two negative quarters of G.D.P.): This correlation isn’t meaningful in any way. Lots of things rise (or fall) . . .
Amory B. Lovins is the energy maven’s energy maven, viewed variously as a visionary or a heretic in his assessments of how the U.S. and the world should be generating and using energy. More specifically, he is the chairman and chief scientist at the Rocky Mountain Institute, a man who has won many awards, written many books, and, as if that weren’t enough, was a fan favorite for Energy Secretary when we asked blog readers a few months ago to give incoming President Obama some advice.
Mike, a 30-year-old engineer, writes in with a real-estate dilemma in which he’s considering a tricky tradeoff: is it worth sabotaging his own credit rating in order to walk away from a house that’s worth far less than his mortgage? Already Been Blegged Here’s what Freakonomics readers have been blegging for lately. How to Handicap a Multi-Race Challenge? Book-Club Questions . . .
Apparently not. Consider this interesting passage from The Revenge of Gaia: Earth’s Climate Crisis and the Fate of Humanity, by James Lovelock:
From a reader named Kevin O’Toole comes a bleg that needs input from people with experience in the realms of running, races, and maybe Olympic competition. (We tussled with Olympic medal counts here; and Justin Wolfers harnessed your collective wisdom when he ran the Stockholm Marathon.) Here’s Kevin’s story: For the past few years, I’ve had some ongoing bets with . . .
A reader named Joel Margolese of Andover, Mass., while on holiday vacation in Boca Raton, Fla., wrote the following:
Doing the annual pilgrimage to South Florida this holiday season, we’ve all been struck by how
everywhere seems to be more crowded than usual. Parks, beaches, even stores are jammed. We could barely find a parking space at our favorite park, which is usually empty.
Simon Rogers moved to New York from London when he was 28 to begin his modeling career. About two years ago, he created UglyNY, a talent and modeling agency affiliated with Ugly in London, which is run by a friend. You’ll see photos of his clients throughout the rest of this post.
As Rogers once told The New York Times, UglyNY serves the market for “great-looking people, people who’ve really been hit with the ugly stick, and everything in between.” UglyNY’s recent clients include Clairol, Walmart, and Vanity Fair. Demand for “real people,” Rogers says, is growing — in part because of the influences of reality TV, MySpace, etc. Plus they are often cheaper.
So today is a two-fer: both Tom Daschle and Nancy Killefer will not be joining the Obama administration, as planned, as Health and Human Services secretary and chief performance officer, respectively. They were both undone by failure to pay taxes.
I’ve made no secret of my Pittsburgh Steelers fandom — the most recent example is here — and so yes, Sunday was a happy day in our house. The problem is that my productivity suffers afterwards because there’s so much post-game stuff to monitor.
One year ago, we ran a simple contest on this blog: come up with a new six-word motto for the U.S. There were more than 1,000 submissions, a heated runoff between the finalists, and eventually a winner: “Our worst critics prefer to stay.” The year that followed has been dramatic to say the least: the historic presidential election, a train . . .
We’ve invited a special guest to judge our Bernie Madoff limerick contest: Chris J. Strolin, founder and editor-in-chief of The OEDILF, The Omnificent English Dictionary In Limerick Form. The OEDILF is an international online dictionary-writing project, the goal of which is to write at least one limerick for every definition of every word in the English language. Not quite five . . .
That’s how PMSBuddy.com pitches itself. To wit: PMSBuddy.com is a free service created with a single goal in mind: to keep you aware of when your wife, girlfriend, mother, sister, daughter, or any other women in your life are closing in on “that time of the month” – when things can get intense for what may seem to be no . . .
After the 9/11 terrorist attack on New York, a lot of people wrote or called to ask if my family and I were O.K. Some of these people were casual acquaintances at best but, for many of them, I was the only person they knew who lived in New York. Their concern was extremely moving even if, at first, a . . .
For anyone who read, even casually, about the welfare wars of the 1990’s, it seems strange that there is so little conversation, political or otherwise, about the topic these days. That may soon be changing, of course, as the proposed Obama stimulus plan attempts to direct money toward the poorest segments of our population.
Mario Batali is one of the best-known chefs/entrepreneurs in the world. During college, at Rutgers, he double majored: Spanish theater (who knew?) and economics. He was good enough to submit to our FREAK-Quently Asked Questions (past entries here).
An FAQ with Mario Batali:
A reader named Jacquilynne Schlesier writes: My book club is reading Freakonomics as our selection of the month and we’re meeting on Wednesday. It’s my selection, so I’m responsible for bringing 10 questions that’ll prompt discussion about the book. Based on the argument that broke out at our last meeting when I merely mentioned the idea behind the abortion/crime bits . . .
A Palestinian in a tunnel between Gaza and Egypt. (Photo: Moises Saman/The New York Times) A pair of recent articles — one in The New York Times and the other, a McClatchy report, in The Seattle Times — describe in close-up detail how Palestinians living in Gaza have gotten back to work digging tunnels that lead into Egypt. These tunnels, . . .
I rarely have occasion these days to see new movies in theaters, but I had the good fortune recently to see two of the Oscar-nominated best films, Frost/Nixon and Slumdog Millionaire, within 24 hours. It was a strange coincidence that both of them were time-jumping stories built around TV shows.
Now that New York Governor David Paterson has appointed Kirsten Gillibrand to fill the U.S. Senate seat vacated by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, here’s a strange fact to consider: There are six positions in New York State for which statewide elections are held: governor, lieutenant governor, the two U.S. senators, attorney general, and comptroller. But at the moment, only . . .
The Times recently reported the death of Constance E. Cook, a former assemblywoman from upstate New York who co-wrote the measure that legalized abortion in that state in 1970, three years before the U.S. Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade did so for most of the rest of the country. While the history of Roe is widely known — and, . . .
Hospitals may be more recession-proof than many other industries, but they are hardly immune. If you are running a hospital these days and want keep your beds full, what should you do: Try to raid your competitors for the best doctors available? Undertake an ad campaign that trumpets the excellence of your care? Or maybe just install wireless internet and spruce up the rooms?
A reader named Abhishek Rawat writes in to describe, and then solve, a puzzle he has noticed in his native India:
In India all major cities have public transport vehicles called autorickshaws. They are mounted on three wheels, operate on very low horsepower, and have a center of gravity that allows them to swivel in impossible twists around the traffic. In short, they’re the perfect transportation vehicle for people who do not have a personal transport and do not wish to take the bus.
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