The headline says it all, although the unspoken question is: will globalization indeed result in the hegemony of English, as has long been promised/threatened? We gathered up some wise people who spend their time thinking about such things — Christian Rolling, Mark Liberman, Henry Hitchings, and John Hayden — and asked them to answer our question. Many thanks for their . . .
What do American drivers, the children of Lake Wobegon, and termites have in common? They are all above average. Here’s what a regular reader called LLP pointed out in an e-mail: There is a TV ad running here in Southern California for a pest control company. It states that “the average termite eats 24 hours a day, 7 days a . . .
I’ve been thinking a lot about teeth lately. First I read this post by Ian Ayres on the value of getting a tooth cleaning. Then I was out in Salt Lake City to give a lecture at the University of Utah, and the student who drove me around was a very nice guy whose father is a dentist, and we . . .
The Shangri-La staples. A couple of years back, we wrote about the very interesting research of Berkeley psychology professor Seth Roberts, whose self-experimentation included a weight-loss program that was incredibly simple, cheap, and seemingly effective. Later, Seth turned his method into a book called The Shangri-La Diet. The diet is really a simple appetite-suppressing plan whereby you regularly ingest some . . .
Here’s the most recent guest bleg from Fred Shapiro, editor of the Yale Book of Quotations. His past blegs can be found here. Last week I blegged for examples of modern proverbs, like “Sh*t happens,” “It takes a village to raise a child,” “Different strokes for different folks,” “The opera ain’t over until the fat lady sings,” “There ain’t no . . .
In keeping with our aptonym tradition, a bunch of helpful readers have sent in good examples of people whose last names go well with their professions. To wit: From a reader named James: Apparently, the city of Boston has a tree inspector named Leif Fixen. (Also, the photo credit on that story goes to a guy named Kamerman.) From our . . .
According to the Yale Book of Quotations (whose future editions are being improved by Freakonomics readers), war is: “hell” (Napoleon Bonaparte), “too serious a matter to entrust to to military men” (Georges Clemenceau), and “a condition of progress” (Ernest Renan). What follows below are 12 replies to the question “What do you think about war in general?” The replies all . . .
I’ve been reading through some economics literature on fairness, altruism, and the like — much of it centered on game-playing that is meant to represent how we make decisions in the real world. One common early game was an adaptation of the Prisoner’s Dilemma. Here, courtesy of Wikipedia (excerpted from this book, I think), is a description of the Prisoner’s . . .
As prices go, “free” is an interesting one. Dan Ariely plays with the idea in his book Predictably Irrational, as does Seth Godin — and Chris Andersen has gone so far as to suggest that “$0.00 is the Future of Business.” There are, of course, a lot of different kinds of “free.” Giving away a free razor or a free . . .
Here’s the most recent guest bleg from Fred Shapiro, editor of the Yale Book of Quotations. His past blegs can be found here. Last week about 100 people responded to my blegging for examples of famous computer proverbs. In general, proverb dictionaries are filled with traditional sayings like “A stitch in time saves nine,” ignoring modern proverbs. Yet modern proverbs . . .
We’ve had a lot of conversations on this blog about charitable contributions. For instance: where people like to give, and why; how a young philanthropist should disburse $70 million; whether to give to a street beggar, a hot dog vendor, or neither. So let’s start one more conversation on the subject. There have been a pair of huge natural disasters . . .
… that people who go around saying “I’m a perfectionist” never are, while people who actually are perfectionists never go around saying it? I have.
We’ve written before about pay-as-you-wish commerce, most significantly the case of a bagel man in the Washington, D.C., area, but also a coffee shop in Seattle and three instances of pay-as-you-wish download-able music: Radiohead, Jane Siberry, and SongSlide. Now here’s another baked-goods pay-as-you-wish scheme that’s worth looking at, concerning a bakery in Kitchener, Ontario, called City Cafe Bakery. Below is . . .
Michael Pollan recently wrote a provocative and thoughtful essay called “Why Bother?” in The Times Magazine about whether it’s worth it to make individual behavior changes to fight climate change. There were a lot of pieces of the essay that Freakonomics readers would find of interest, and perhaps would quarrel with. Here is a particularly compelling section about Wendell Berry‘s . . .
In our Times column published last Sunday, we wrote about how Mike Zarren of the Boston Celtics organization uses statistical analysis to help with personnel and strategic decisions. Here’s one paragraph toward the end: Zarren is also responsible for the Celtics’ basketball-related technology and uses a service that delivers video footage tagged with statistical information. With just a few mouse . . .
The other day, I received an e-mail that I shouldn’t have. While my name was indeed in the list of addressees, and while I knew some of the other addressees (as well as the sender), my name was plainly included by mistake. It took me about three seconds to figure this out, since the topic under discussion had nothing to . . .
Public-health officials in northern California are worried that foreclosed and abandoned homes — at least the ones with swimming pools — might become a breeding ground for mosquitoes that could carry West Nile virus. From a Mercury News article: Worried health officials will embark today on an aerial search for backyard, watery havens for mosquitoes that potentially carry the deadly . . .
Frans de Waal is one of the world’s most prominent primatologists, known especially for having drawn parallels between the behavior of humans and non-human primates — from peacemaking to morality to culture. His first book, Chimpanzee Politics, compared the schmoozing and scheming of chimps with the behavior of human politicians. (Newt Gingrich, who was then speaker of the House, recommended . . .
Robert Reich We recently solicited your questions for former labor secretary Robert Reich. He met your questions with earnest, interesting answers and some good advice — like how to avoid being outsourced. He also opined that there are too many M.B.A.’s running around, and that “they are killing the economy!” You might also like this line: “Democrats aren’t disciplined at . . .
Here’s the latest bleg request from Fred Shapiro, editor of the Yale Book of Quotations. You can find his past blegs here and you can send blegs of your own here. The past few weeks I have been blegging for information about famous computer quotations to help with future editions of the recently published Yale Book of Quotations. Can anyone . . .
Photo: Pamela Klaffke Yeah, zoos are fun. So are cartoons. And I certainly see the appeal of a teddy bear. But why are kids so over-the-top crazy about animals? I am especially struck by the fact that some of the most popular cartoon and children’s-book animals are among the least appealing animals in real life. Mice, for instance. And pigs . . .
Here is an oversimplification of a complex problem: 1. Thanks to the miracles of modern medicine, a sick or dying human being can receive a transplanted organ from another human being. 2. Some of those organs must inevitably come from cadavers: i.e., you can’t give your heart to someone else and still live. But some transplanted organs can come from . . .
Here is the latest offering of Indexed drawings from our regular guest poster Jessica Hagy. Her past posts are here, her own blog here, and her new book here. If the past is any indication of the future, then at least one commenter will write something to the effect of: “Huh? What are these drawings doing on the Freakonomics blog? . . .
When I was a kid, I loved baseball more than anything, and I’m afraid I mean that literally — more than my family, my friends, even more than my dog. If given the opportunity, I would have played baseball 24 hours a day. And when I couldn’t play it, I would watch it on T.V. Now I can barely sit . . .
There’s one theme that we’ve touched on repeatedly in our Times columns and on this blog, and which we’ll devote considerable space to in SuperFreakonomics: how technological innovation and robust markets tend to fix a lot of problems that seem unsolvable. In the business community, “innovation” is a buzzword of the highest order (so high, in fact, that some people . . .
Back when I worked as an editor at the Times Magazine, we held weekly or twice-weekly editorial meetings at which you’d go around the table and suggest story ideas. There were many varieties of ideas, including: Dutiful but Dull; Dutiful and Worthwhile; Sexy but Substance-Free; Just Not Interesting; and everyone’s favorite: Interesting — if True. Into this final category falls . . .
Here’s the latest bleg request from Fred Shapiro, editor of the Yale Book of Quotations. You can find his past blegs here and you can send blegs of your own here. The past few weeks I have been blegging for information about famous computer quotations to help with future editions of the recently published Yale Book of Quotations. Another questionable . . .
I walked into a Starbucks in Manhattan the other day and noticed that the food in the glass display case now lists three key facts: the name of the item, the price, and the calories. This last fact is new. It is the result of a recent New York City regulation that requires chain restaurants — those with 15 or . . .
Robert Reich Robert Reich, perhaps best known as labor secretary under Bill Clinton, recently announced his endorsement of Barack Obama. He explains his decision on his blog. Reich has served in three national administrations, and implemented the Family and Medical Leave Act while he was labor secretary. He was awarded the Vaclev Havel Foundation Prize for his work in economic . . .
Eggleston and his daughter two minutes before it began to hail. Says Eggleston, “Hail was not in the forecast.” A gentleman named J.D. Eggleston recently wrote to us with a rather interesting report, a nice piece of D.I.Y. Freakonomics concerning the accuracy of local T.V. weather forecasts. I thought it was interesting enough to post in its entirety here on . . .
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