When Freakonomics.com was launched in 2005, it was essentially a blog (c’mon, blogs were a thing then!). The first Freakonomics book had just been published, and Stephen J. Dubner and Steven D. Levitt wanted to continue their conversation with readers. Over time, the blog grew to have millions of readers, a variety of regular and guest writers, and it was hosted by The New York Times, where Dubner and Levitt also published a monthly “Freakonomics” column. The authors later collected some of the best blog writing in a book called When to Rob a Bank … and 131 More Warped Suggestions and Well-Intended Rants. (The publisher rejected their original title: We Were Only Trying to Help. The publisher had also rejected the title Freakonomics at first, so they weren’t surprised.) While the blog has not had any new writing in quite some time, the entire archive is still here for you to read.
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 . . .
In Sicily last Friday, during a soccer match between Catania and Palermo, fans rioted outside the stadium with bombs and steel pipes, resulting in the death of a police officer. As a result, most soccer matches throughout Italy this weekend will be played in empty stadiums. That’s right: fans are being barred from soccer games until the authorities can figure . . .
Here’s what it looked like then. The stats are fun, too. But here is the best page. Hat tip to James Altucher’s Daily Blog Watch. Between DBW and Stockpickr, it looks like my friend James has kinda taken over TheStreet.com. As I’ve said before, James is an amazing guy. He was going to be one of the main characters in . . .
In responding to yesterday’s post about the astronaut love triangle (or, more appropriately, “love V,” as one wise commenter put it), you all offered a number of compelling explanations for the story’s explosion. I must say, however, that I was surprised to read that so many people think of astronauts as larger-than-life heroes, only because I thought that image was . . .
I have been traveling yesterday and today, and have therefore caught more unintentional snippets of media — blaring TV’s in restaurants, hotel lobbies, airport lounges, etc. — than usual. And the same story has been on every single TV: the astronaut love triangle. First I thought it was because I’m in Houston, where Lisa Nowak began her 900-mile diapered drive. . . .
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.)
In the section in Freakonomics about online dating, we referred to some of the more specialized dating sites: ChristianSingles.com, LatinMatcher.com, USMilitarySingles.com, PlusSizeSingles.com, etc. Now there’s a new dating site that serves a shrinking but apparently underserved market: American farmers. FarmersOnly.com is “THE place for farmers, ranchers, and down-to-earth people who relate to the agricultural lifestyle to meet their match.” The . . .
Despite speculation about Rudy Giuliani’s reluctance to run for President, and skepticism that he’s a viable candidate, it looks as though he’s about ready to officially declare himself a candidate. This comes as little surprise to anyone who received the following “Team Rudy” e-mail from Brent Seaborn, a former Bush operative now putting together the Giuliani campaign team. Are Giuliani’s . . .
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 . . .
I read a Wall Street Journal article a few weeks ago about how one very promising form of biofuel, palm oil, is in fact having deleterious effects on the environment. In Southeast Asia, farmers cleared huge swaths of rainforest in order to create palm plantations; they also drained and burned off peatland to create arable land, generating massive smoke pollution. . . .
A friend spotted this book in a store the other day, and thought it bore a certain resemblance to another book he’d seen. I have to say, I don’t get what a dollar bill has to do with an apple. But I was particularly tickled by the title: This is not the first book cover that’s a bit familiar. There . . .
They are among the celebrities featured in a new ad campaign by the Wall Street Journal. Here’s the story — which, unfortunately, doesn’t mention Levitt. But trust me, he’ll show up in the campaign. Remember when Levitt blogged about a very, very strange photo shoot? This is the one. In exchange for appearing in the ad, Levitt (and I assume . . .
Whenever I get change for a dollar, I ask the cashier to keep the pennies. They aren’t worth my time, or hers, or yours. Sometimes the cashier refuses for bookkeeping purposes, in which case I politely accept the pennies and then throw them in the nearest trash can. (Is this illegal? Maybe so, but then so is throwing pennies into . . .
When I first read this headline — “Doctors Warn of Poisoning From Hand Gels” — I assumed the accompanying Reuters article was about the potential danger of becoming too dependent on alcohol-based disinfectants like Purell. (Here’s an article we wrote about hospital-acquired infections and the pressing need for medical personnel to clean their hands; here’s a more recent development.) The . . .
That is my conclusion after seeing this Google Book Search Page for a book called How to Build Your Own Furniture. The page lists three “Related Books,” including How to Make Your Own Recreation and Hobby Rooms, How to Build Your Cabin or Modern Vacation Home, and … Freakonomics. Huh? I am trying to think of what may have fooled . . .
Here’s a new website, from the Dept. of Health & Human Services, that lets you see how your hospital compares to others. Here’s another new site, from the Project for Excellence in Journalism, that lets you see how a particular news story is covered in various media outlets. And if you just need to complain about something, here are some . . .
Even though Americans may be less concerned with global warming than people in many other countries, it is amazing how the subject has recently become so omnipresent. The media is brimming with global warming stories every day, from a variety of angles: environmental, economic, political, etc. How did this happen? How has such a sweeping, complex, controversial issue become such . . .
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 . . .
There’s a new John Tierney column out today, a good one, on doomsday predictions (mostly concerning biological weapons), and who’s backing up their predictions with cash (including Tierney) on LongBets.org. There’s more information on Tierney’s blog, including a link to this interesting essay by Steven Pinker about the overall decline of violence in modern times.
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.
The other day, I posted here about a reader’s complaint that the San Francisco Chronicle turned into a podcast. It was a voicemail message from a man who objected, very strenuously, to some redundant language in a Chronicle article. It was the first installment of a new audio feature the Chronicle is calling “Correct Me if I’m Wrong,” and as . . .
It’s one thing to see a flame war break out on a Web site. But it can’t compare to actually hearing the flamer at work. That was the realization of the S.F. Chronicle, which just had the insanely entertaining idea of turning irate readers’ phone messages into podcasts. Here’s the first one. I will give a prize to the first . . .
Nice post here at Complete that breaks down Web traffic not by unique visitors or even page views, but by time spent at a particular site. The winner, by a gigantic landslide: MySpace. Most of the rest of the top 20 aren’t that surprising (Yahoo!, Amazon.com, Facebook, eBay, etc .). It’s interesting to me that only one bank made the . . .
Jon Tester, the new senator from Montana, posts his daily appointment schedule on his website for all the world to see. According to this A.P. article by Mary Clare Jalonick, such transparency is “fulfilling a promise the Democrat made in his campaign against Republican Sen. Conrad Burns last year. Burns attracted heat for his relationship with Washington interests — most . . .
David Shenk, author of a bunch of really interesting non-fiction books including this one on chess, and this one on Alzheimer’s disease, has begun working on a book about talent. In one key regard, Shenk is following in footsteps of, inter alia, Chris Anderson, who used a blog to help develop the content of his book, both called The Long . . .
Levitt posted a quiz here, and then gave one hint, and then another. Nobody has come up with exactly the right answer yet, however. I’m not all that surprised: what the conference organizer did was indeed pretty tricky. A lot of you were close, or had different elements of the answer right, but not quite. Now Levitt has gotten on . . .
Pardon this brief interruption of contest fever (see three previous entries) but … Here’s a nice observation written by Nicole Tourtelot, who toils away here in the Freakonomics office (maintaining this Web site, fulfilling bookplate requests, etc.): Dubner posted recently about intentionally misspelled domain names, such as Stockpickr.com, that aim to grab clumsy typists and/or poor spellers. The idea that . . .
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.
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