Levitt discusses Louis Michaud, whose attempts to create tornadoes and harness their power as electricity may point us in the right direction towards creating a global warming solution.
Levitt responds to the fiery criticism of his previous post, “If You Were a Terrorist, How Would You Attack?”
Levitt commends U.S. News and World Reports writer James Pethokoukis for his analysis of the faulty economics used by the Democratic Presidential candidates during their televised debate.
In the wake of changes in airport security technology, Levitt lists his own ideas for a fear-maximizing terror plot, and solicits other ideas from readers as a means of bringing possible scenarios into discussion before they actually happen.
The 2005 Hurricane season was the most active and destructive in recorded history. The devastation from hurricanes like Katrina, Rita, and Wilma was powerful evidence that man-made global warming had triggered an onslaught of unforeseen consequences — at least, that was the way the media tended to portray it. Maybe I am wrong, but I think the current focus on . . .
I grew up just a few miles from the bridge that collapsed in Minneapolis. We were a family that was terrified of heights. At least once a month, my father would mention how he thought a bridge over the Mississippi was going to collapse. We would be calling him Nostradamus today, except that his doomsday prediction was about a different . . .
Yesterday I wrote a nondescript post on books that knock God. It got more than 100 comments in a day — about as many as we have ever gotten on any post where we weren’t giving something away. Now I know who buys these books: the same people who read this blog.
A little more than a year ago I blogged about how every third book had the word “bullshit” in its title. Happily, that trend faded. I could only find two books on Amazon released in the last year with “bullshit” in the title. Now, it seems that going after God is the hip thing to do. Daniel Dennett started the . . .
Most of our blog readers couldn’t care less about refereeing in academic publishing. And they should be thankful. For a tenure-track economist, getting published is a brutal process. You spend a year or two coming up with an idea, try to think over every aspect of the problem, collect and analyze data, and finally produce a 30-page paper summarizing all . . .
I once had the honor of sharing a meal with Steven Pinker. He was as fun and brilliant in person as he is in his writing. The Chicago Sun-Times recently published a piece by him (which we’ve mentioned before) that’s also the preface to a book entitled “What is Your Dangerous Idea? Today’s Leading Thinkers on the Unthinkable.” The article . . .
I wrote last week about the “invitation” I received to give an interview that would only cost me $3,995. Today I get another amusing spam email. This one is from Worldwide Law Enforcement Consulting Group, Inc. They are putting on a conference. There was nothing notable about the email, except for this one line: DUE TO GREAT RESPONSE EARLY REGISTRATION . . .
After Freakonomics got popular, it was unbelievable how many interview requests/invitations I received. I don’t think I’m exaggerating in saying there were at least 10 per day for a year, or over 3,500 in that time. Now I get “only” three or four a day. Needless to say, I got really good at saying no, much to the chagrin of . . .
I was playing poker at Full Tilt Poker tonight when across the chat board comes an official-looking message saying that an employee of Full Tilt was arrested for stealing $200,000. The message says for full information go to http://www.fulltilt-cnn.com. (Don’t go clicking on things there until you read further!) The URL seemed fishy. So I went to Google News and . . .
I was at O’Hare airport yesterday and saw something very unusual: a person actually using a pay phone. Airports have enormous numbers of pay phones which, if you observe them, go virtually untouched. At best you will see a senior citizen using one from time to time (as I did yesterday). The pay phone is one invention whose time has . . .
News reports yesterday say the FBI is investigating an NBA referee who allegedly bet on games that he was calling. This is a perfect problem for an economist to answer with data, and the obvious man for the job is Justin Wolfers, who has written papers on NBA referees and on point shaving in basketball! Message to Justin: Freakonomics blog . . .
A few weeks back Dubner blogged about the video resume. Far more effective, it turns out, is the front-page resume. I have a good friend named Sally. Last week she won a $25,000 prize as “Nurse of the Year.” This week she got laid off! That made for a great story in the Chicago Sun-Times today. The new job offers . . .
Money magazine has a new columnist who simply goes by the name “The Mole.” I love the idea behind the column: an industry insider reveals the dirty secrets of financial planner misdeeds to the general public. I won’t blow his cover, but I know the guy who is writing it. He is smart and has interesting ideas. And, surprise, surprise: . . .
At least for me, there are not too many questions that would lead me to respond, “For $25 million, no way, but for $50 million I’ll think about it.” Twenty-five million dollars is so much money that it’s hard to think about what you would do with it. It sure would be nice to have the first $25 million. I’m . . .
AIDS in Africa is one of the gravest problems facing the world. Emily Oster has some of the most interesting ideas about AIDS in Africa. You can see and hear these ideas online, courtesy of the wonderful folks at the TED Conference.
While at this celebrity golf tournament, I met a lot of stars, from Kevin Nealon to Gale Sayers. None of them were as friendly as Super Bowl MVP Mark Rypien. He and I don’t have much in common. The one thing we share, I wish we didn’t. Just like us, he lost a young son named Andrew. The Rypien Foundation . . .
If you can’t figure out the answer to that question, you need some serious help. Thanks to the kindness of Jonathan Thomas, Martha Miller, and all the other fine folks at American Century Investments, I got the chance to play golf with Emmitt Smith, winner of Dancing with the Stars. Before that, he had some success in football as well. . . .
Over the weekend, the Washington Post published an article suggesting that much of the decline in crime in the 1990s may have been due to the reduction of childhood lead exposure after the removal of lead from gasoline and house paint. This is an intriguing hypothesis. There is evidence on an individual level that high exposure to lead is harmful . . .
For years, I’ve begged my wife to let me buy a gun. The only reason I want one is that, if an intruder enters my house and tries to terrorize my family, I would like to be able to defend us. The baseball bat under the bed just doesn’t seem sufficient to do the trick. Never mind that I am . . .
So much for the Hippocratic Oath. The latest terror attacks in the United Kingdom were apparently carried out by doctors. The specifics of the case are admittedly bizarre, but the general principle that acts of terror are often committed by individuals with high levels of education is not at all unusual, a fact I learned from economist Alan Krueger‘s excellent . . .
A young woman in England wants to sell something unusual to fund her college education. We wrote in Freakonomics about how the increased access to information provided by the Internet has helped consumers overcome the historical information advantage that real estate agents and life insurance salespeople have had. This is one case, however, in which information asymmetry is alive and . . .
Every thug in Nigeria needed a machete to help ensure that the general elections in the country were conducted “properly.” Take a guess what happened to the price of machetes after the election, according to Reuters. To be honest, though, I have a hard time believing this is true for the same reason that gun control laws don’t work. Machetes, . . .
South African reader David Drew pointed me to this report, stating that one of South Africa’s political parties has called for an investigation of the “extremely suspect” March 3rd South African National Lottery after it yielded a record nine jackpot winners (as opposed to the typical 0-3 winners). The evidence given to support claims that the drawing was rigged is . . .
I have no idea what effect pornography has on you, but veterinarian Kannikar Nimtragul hopes that a daily dose of X-rated videos will do the trick on his client. (For an economist’s take on the effects of porn, see this earlier blog post.)
Companies like Gallup do surveys all the time on a wide range of issues: Who do you intend to vote for in the next election? What issue are you most worried about? Do you approve of the job George Bush is doing as president? Are you in favor of higher taxes? While we’ve expressed skepticism about the answers people might . . .
Given my father’s medical specialty, you might think I’m referring to intestinal gas. Actually, though, I am talking about the kind of gas you put in your fuel tank. In a recent study, researchers at the University of Illinois have calculated how much extra gasoline is being used each year because Americans weigh more and thus require more fuel to . . .
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