Until today, I would have been hard-pressed to answer that one. In today’s New York Times “Inside the List” column they give the answer: Freakonomics and the Dalai Lama‘s book “The Art of Happiness” are among the books to stay for the longest period of time on the New York Times bestseller list without ever making it to number 1.
About twice a year I go on a health kick that lasts a few weeks. Typically this involves going for one-mile runs two or three times, doing as many push-ups as I can (about eight) every night, increasing the fiber in my diet, ramping up my carrot juice consumption, and taking whatever health pill is currently in vogue. I’m right . . .
What happens when officials decide to ban tobacco inside a prison? Exactly what happens when you ban drugs in the outside world. Here is Gary Becker’s take on the war on drugs, written for a general audience on the Becker-Posner blog. Roland Fryer, Paul Heaton, Kevin Murphy, and I have written an academic article on the impact of crack cocaine. . . .
This song was written by a procrastinating Econ 101 student: “Girl, Your Marginal Benefit Is Far Greater Than Your Marginal Cost” The tune is quite catchy. If you listen to the lyrics carefully, though, you will see that the singer/songwriter probably should have spent more time studying for the exam and less time writing this great song…the economics concepts described . . .
My friend Laura Beth Nielsen at the American Bar Foundation has a theory that people who are good at one thing are good at everything. Since she shared it with me, I have thought often about whether it is true. I tend to believe it, with the important qualification that the right kind of practice is critical to being good . . .
Not long ago Dubner blogged about the various knock-offs of the apple-orange concept. Here is one that is a little different — is there perhaps a bit of onion thrown into the mix for good luck? The website must be gettting a lot of traffic because a whole bunch of Freakonomics blog readers have already been in touch to alert . . .
With city elections fast approaching in Chicago, I went looking to find out more about the time that the Gangster Disciples, the biggest gang in Chicago, ran a candidate for alderman. I had always heard about it, but never knew any details. Legend has it that the Chicago police had decided to tolerate the Gangster Disciples, but because they got . . .
A number of Portuguese reporters have contacted me asking my opinion about the nationwide vote to consider whether women in that country should be allowed to have abortions. After some thought, I decided not to reply to any of these press inquiries. The reason is that my research in abortion and crime, as discussed in Freakonomics, is virtually irrelevant to . . .
Ed Glaeser is one of the smartest economists around. He is a professor at Harvard with an astonishing list of academic papers on topics all over the map. He was profiled a year or two back in the NY Times Sunday magazine. Ed has started writing op-ed pieces for the Boston Globe. His most recent op-ed has recommendations for reforming . . .
Over a decade ago, Swarthmore economist Fred Pryor wrote this fascinating article about reading through the records of the East German secret police who arrested him while he was doing dissertation research in East Germany in the early 1960s. It pales in comparison, but when Sudhir Venkatesh and I were doing research on gangs there was always a lingering concern . . .
An interesting article in the Seattle Times about a coffee shop in Kirkland, Washington. The coffee is free, but only if you are willing to suffer the guilt of not having paid for it and the scorn of other customers. (Hat tip to Jason Kenealey.)
I agree with almost everything in this opinion piece by Al Neuharth, the founder of USA Today: Super Bowl betting spotlights silly laws Plain Talk By Al Neuharth USA TODAY Founder More than half of all adults across the USA, about 112 million of us, will bet on the Super Bowl this weekend. Most of the wagers will be illegal. . . .
On the first day of class, I tell my undergraduates that if they only learn one thing in my course, I hope that it will be to recognize and appreciate the difference between correlation and causality. Most of the students laugh smugly, thinking they already know the difference. It never ceases to amaze me, however, when a cleverly designed exam . . .
When Mark Duggan and I wrote our statistical analysis of match rigging in sumo wrestling (which also was featured in Freakonomics), I spent a lot of time digging through translations of Japanese media reports of suspected past match rigging incidents. Almost every prior accusation of match rigging had a common theme: it was always a foreign sumo wrestler at the . . .
Al Roth, a Harvard economics professor who has been a leader in getting kidney exchanges established, forwarded this press release to me: NEWS RELEASE U.S. Representative Charlie Norwood, Tenth District, Georgia For immediate release: January 29, 2007 Norwood/Inslee Introduce Paired Kidney Donation Bill in House (Washington, DC) – Patients waiting for a life-saving kidney transplant could have that wait significantly . . .
At least if you live in Chicago or California. If you are interested, there is a memorial service at the University of Chicago today at 2 pm central time that will be broadcast over the web. And there is a documentary on PBS tonight.
Tif177 was on the right trail when he/she offered the following guess: the speaker was actually a recorded speech/tape that the organizer played at a faster RPM than originally intended. I am getting on an airplane and will be out of action for the day, so if someone gets the right answer Dubner said he would post a blog entry.
As predicted, this truly is a hard quiz. Still no correct answers in the first 130 comments. Here is a hint: The organizer did something very clever and very devious.
About six months ago I was at a big conference. I was scheduled to present at 2 PM to an audience of 500 or 1,000 people. Another speaker was on from 1 to 2 PM. I told the organizer I would be back by 1:45 PM, leaving plenty of time before I had to hit the stage. At 1:30 I . . .
We’ve written in the past about the discomfort (or worse) that people feel when it comes to paying donors for organs, even though doing so would likely be an enormous boon for those suffering right now on organ donation waiting lists. From CNN.com, here is an article discussing a proposal to pay women who donate eggs for stem cell research. . . .
The most interesting article in last Sunday’s New York Times magazine, in my opinion, was a fascinating window into race in America on the back page of the magazine called “Pick One” written by David Matthews. My friend and co-author Roland Fryer continues to think hard about these issues also.
Robert Dodge has written a biography of Thomas Schelling, which is available now. I just found out about it and ordered it, so I have not read it yet. I have read the delightful preface written by Richard Zeckhauser, a long-time colleague of Schelling at Harvard, which exactly captures my interactions with Schelling. Schelling is a Nobel prize winner in . . .
Yesterday, Dubner was part of a Google event entitled “Un-bound: Advancing Book Publishing in a Digital World.” Rebecca Lieb provides a fascinating write-up of the day’s events. I was particularly struck by the comment made by Cory Doctorow, “Why don’t people care enough about literature to steal it?” In a world in which illegal downloading of music is endemic, copyright . . .
A while back Dubner blogged about how Consumer Reports had demanded a recall of a number of rear-facing child seats because they performed so poorly in their tests. Now Consumer Reports has a recall of their own. Apparently they may have done some of the tests wrong. We will have to wait and see what their revised study finds. A . . .
When I was a child and didn’t eat my dinner, my mother (like all mothers of her generation) would remind me that there were starving children in Africa. However, she never would take me up on my generous offer to ship the leftover food to those starving children in lieu of my having to eat it. My friend Jill Youse . . .
The New York Times has an article about the most promising young economists. I was glad to see so many of my friends on the list.
When I was a graduate student, my mentor Jim Poterba told me more than once that my research should “always be about the economy and never about economists.” I took those words to heart and consistently resisted the temptation to do self-referential research about the economics profession. I finally violated Poterba’s rule at this year’s American Economic Association meetings. Doubly . . .
My colleague and co-author John List is one of the most prolific and influential economists around. He’s got a new working paper with Michael Margolis and Daniel Osgood that makes the surprising claim that the Endangered Species Act — which is designed to help endangered species — may actually harm them. Why? The key intuition is that after a species . . .
The American Economic Association annual meetings are going on right now. Once a year about 10,000 economists all descend on a city (never Las Vegas because not enough economists gamble), give seminars to one another, and interview the newest crop of Ph.D. students to determine who will get jobs where. The events at these meetings are not generally very newsworthy. . . .
I got an interesting email from blog reader William F. Barkley the other day. I reproduce a condensed version of it below: This time each year I find myself mired in a College Football Bowl Pool with five college friends (we’re all around your age) from Babson College. We try to pick the winner (against the spread) for each of . . .
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