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 . . .
Levitt and I missed a terrific business opportunity. If we had even an ounce of entrepreneurship between us, we would have parlayed the Freakonomics chapter on baby names into a baby-name-consulting business. According to this Reuters report, parents in Britian spend “up to 45 hours” picking out a name for their child, “a combined 30 million hours annually.” Let’s see: . . .
We recently solicited your questions for poker man Phil Gordon. In his answers below, he discusses (among other things) variance, sunglasses, and why he’s not a gambler by nature, but rather “a strategic investor.” This is a really good and smart Q&A (although he did neglect to mention a certain beat-down he once suffered). Thanks to Phil and to all . . .
Remember when the Michigan Wolverines kicked off their football season last year with a loss to Appalachian State University? Some people called it the biggest upset in college football history. Well, as Mike Huguenin notes at Rivals.com, it looks like the big-time schools are being a lot more careful this year in picking their supposedly patsy opponents. Appalachian, meanwhile, is . . .
If you are a parent who’s trying to save for your kids’ college education, you should check out Jane Kim‘s article in the Wall Street Journal about 529 college-savings plans. If you don’t know what a 529 plan is, you should; and if you do, Kim’s article is helpful in assessing whether you’re optimizing your participation. In a nutshell: a . . .
As has now become Thursday custom, we’ve posted below a bleg from Fred Shapiro, editor of the Yale Book of Quotations. This is easily my favorite so far. I hope you all can help him out. (As always, feel free to send us your own bleg requests here.) Our Daily Bleg by Fred R. Shapiro Last week I blegged, seeking . . .
Doctors at several hospitals in Leipzig, Germany, could not figure out the cause of a recent rash of lead poisoning. Was there an environmental disaster underway? They kept seeking the source and, after several weeks, as they write in the New England Journal of Medicine: … we detected a common pattern: the patients were young, were unemployed or were students, . . .
I was ugly from about sixth grade all the way through high-school. The worst was in high-school. I had braces, acne, glasses, and dark curly hair. I didn’t play any sports — my only real hobby was playing chess and I read a lot of comic books. That is James Altucher, whom I’ve blogged about before, writing in his Financial . . .
I am scheduled to appear on Good Morning America this coming Monday, April 14, sometime after 8:00 a.m. E.D.T., to talk about a subject that was born on this blog: our contest to pick a new six-word motto for the U.S.
Justin Wolfers called a recession here not long ago. Ben Bernanke seems about ready to call it himself. Now a reader named Alexis Tatarsky has put the question to all of you on our Freakonomics Prediction Center: On a scale of 1 to 10, with the recession of 2001 being a 4 and the Great Depression an 8, what will . . .
Tucked into a Times report about a typically out-of-touch New York State budget crafted by the wizards of Albany comes this news: Another $50 million [of state revenue] will come from requiring online retailers like Amazon that do not have a physical presence in New York to collect sales taxes on purchases made by New Yorkers and remit them to . . .
Phil Gordon has made more than a few appearances on this blog, most of them concerning his skills as a jack-of-all-poker-trades: he’s a champion player, author, teacher, ringleader, analyst, and entrepreneur. He hasn’t always applied his smarts to cards: a former computer programmer, he started out working at Lockheed Missiles and Space Company on artificial intelligence projects; he also sold . . .
Last week, Fred R. Shapiro, editor of the The Yale Book of Quotations, inaugurated Our Daily Bleg, with a request to learn the true source of the quote “Read my lips.” A consensus has yet to be reached on the origin, but your thoughtful comments (to which Fred replied) made some headway — and possibly helped out Netflix.
That is the name of a new program being offered by Starlight Ministries, the stripper outreach program in Virginia I recently blogged about. Here’s how Lia Scholl of Starlight describes the program: Our newest venture is called Exotic Dancer, M.B.A. It’s a one-day seminar for women who are exotic dancers (and there will be some private dancers/women in prostitution there, . . .
In response to our bleg request, Rafe Petty of the University of Chicago chemistry department wrote in with the following question(s). Let him know what you think in the comments section, and send future blegs to: bleg@freakonomics.com. I was recently at a lecture by George Whitesides, one of the most well-known living chemists. He gave a very interesting lecture at . . .
The debate about the effectiveness and safety of psychiatric drugs rambles on while new (if not conclusive) psychological studies come out with the frequency of fad diets. We invited some people who think a lot about such issues — David B. Baker, John Medina, Dan Ariely, Satoshi Kanazawa, Peter D. Kramer, and Laurie Schwartz — and asked them the following: . . .
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