The Miraculous Decline in Deaths by Fire
New York City is on track this year to break its record for the fewest number of deaths by fire. To me, the decline of death by fire is one of the most underappreciated success stories of the past 100 years.
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.
New York City is on track this year to break its record for the fewest number of deaths by fire. To me, the decline of death by fire is one of the most underappreciated success stories of the past 100 years.
Russia and Qatar landed the 2018 and 2022 FIFA World Cup. Congratulations to them. But has anyone in those countries’ bid committees ever heard of the winner’s curse?
Deaths can be costly — especially to the government if you’re a billionaire.
Is it likely that we’ll follow the perfectly rational incentives designed by benevolent governmental guardians to reduce obesity? Fat chance.
Vitamin D: should we take less or triple that intake? Whatever you do, don’t just read this headline and run with it.
Do ATMs in Japan price discriminate on evenings and weekends? Or are you paying extra to ensure that there’s cash in the machine?
What happens if and when Siberia’s permafrost melts away? Behold the release of methane.
Christmas is prime time to think about deadweight loss. Scroogenomics aside, tell the world what you really want this year using the Freakonomics Personal Gift Registry.
The phrase “OK” is everywhere, but where did it get its start? A new book tackles its history.
Little dairy farms disappeared from the map, but now they’re making a comeback. Do “locavores” have anything to do with it?
Cornell psychology professor Daryl Bem has demonstrated “numerous ‘retroactive’ psi effects – that is, phenomena that are inexplicable according to current scientific knowledge” among hundreds of Cornell students.
I’m back to inviting readers to submit quotations whose origins they want me to try to trace, using my book, The Yale Book of Quotations, and my more recent research.
It’s that time of year again – ChristmaHanuKwanzaa, that is – and if you’re reading this blog, there’s an obvious gift to be thinking about: the new illustrated edition of SuperFreakonomics. It will not fit in a stocking (it is quite large – a “coffee-table book,” some people call it), but otherwise it is giftable to the max.
One of the less cheery parts of studying transportation is that the activity you have devoted your life to is widely considered an unmitigated downer. Even aside from the external environmental costs each trip places on society, travel is held to be no fun for the traveler. We don’t hop behind the wheel for the love of being honked at, cut off and stuck behind a creeping bus or semi; we endure travel only because we’ve got someplace to go. Right?
The engagement of Prince William and Kate Middleton has thrilled tabloid newspapers around the world, but the effects may be more far-reaching than you realize.
In a previous post, I asked why the writers of the TV show House chose for last week’s episode (“A Pox on our House”) to have a sick family composed of a recently married husband and wife who each bring to the marriage a child from a previous relationship.
The City of Austin sells valet parking companies the right to use a parking space for $250 per year. Is that the right price? I doubt it.
No, this trick won’t work in the NFL, but Driscoll Middle School in Corpus Christi, Tex., pulled it off brilliantly.
One of my favorite images from the new Illustrated SuperFreakonomics (beautifully designed by No. 17) is a decision tree showing how Gary Becker, a young man who was better at handball than math, nevertheless chose math and became the Nobel-winning economist whose research made possible books like ours.
The Boston Marathon filled up in just eight hours — that’s 65 times faster than last year. Self-fulfilling prophecy or athletes outrunning the qualifying times?
The piracy problem off the Horn of Africa has received less media attention in recent months, but the pirates are still going strong, and international efforts to combat the threat have increased. FP’s new photoessay, “Pirate Hunting in the Gulf of Aden,” depicts the battle.
Have you ever wondered just who writes those papers handed in by cheating students? An article in The Chronicle of Higher Education, written by a writer for a “custom-essay company,” has some answers for you.
I’m back to inviting readers to submit quotations whose origins they want me to try to trace using my book, The Yale Book of Quotations, and my more recent research. Here is the latest round.
Celebrity endorsements are all well and good … until the celebrity starts misbehaving. That’s where the insurance companies come in.
Gary Shteyngart’s new novel, Super Sad True Love Story (more here), paints a compelling but amazingly bleak picture of a future ravaged by the twin evils of predictive analytics and texting. Following the truly prescient Snow Crash, his characters are obsessively plugged into their “äppäräts,” souped-up versions of today’s app phones. (One of the funnier lines occurs when one character makes a disparaging reference to another character’s outmoded hand device, saying: “What is this, an iPhone?” (Kindle 1244).) Here is a world where credit scores, eHarmony-compatibility predictions and rankings are ubiquitously at hand. Characters routinely choose the reality of the shadows on their screen over the real world.
It’s been widely reported that London cab drivers have “enlarged hippocampi” thanks to their years spent memorizing London’s streets (a.k.a., acquiring “the Knowledge.” But do their skills generalize?
Britain will soon begin “measuring people’s psychological and environmental well-being” — i.e., their happiness.
Shankar Vedantam of Slate hypothesizes that people continue to procreate, despite overwhelming evidence that parenting isn’t very fun, for much the same reason that cocaine users can’t quit: they’re addicts.
The Economist explains how discrimination in the labor market can be reduced by competition in product markets. As in the U.S., Korean women obtain at least the same education as men; but their rates of labor-force participation are much further below those of men than is true in the U.S., and that’s even true for highly educated women. This provides room for companies to hire equally or more qualified women at the same or even lower wages than men.
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