Finally, a scientific approach to the eternal cats vs. dogs debate. NewScientist evaluated dogs and cats in 11 different categories: brains, shared history, bonding, popularity, understanding, problem solving, vocalization, tractability, supersenses, eco-friendliness, and utility. It was a close contest but Fido ultimately won six to five.
In SuperFreakonomics, far and away the most common subject of emails is drunk walking vs. drunk driving. In particular, every few days someone writes us to tell us that our analysis is wrong because we are comparing the rate of death per mile driven drunk versus the rate of death per mile walked drunk. Sure, they say, drunk walkers get killed more per mile. But since cars travel much faster, per hour, it is safer to drive drunk than to walk drunk.
Does giving a man a job stop him from becoming a political insurgent? The generally accepted wisdom is that it does. In fact, the U.S. and other western powers have distributed millions of dollars of foreign aid in the hopes of reducing political violence and instability.
The F.B.I. released its 2008 data on hate crimes in the U.S. The figures suggest that American hatred is on the rise, but not my much: only about 2 percent. The highest upticks occurred for hate crimes motivated by sexual orientation (up 11 percent) and religion (up 9 percent).
A couple of days ago, Dubner posted a challenge: think about activities that are legal when done for free but become illegal when they are done for money. Despite my recent post on the injustice of the taxi medallion system, not one of the 100+ responders to Dubner’s appeal mentioned that the simple act of driving passengers around is a crime – when it is done for cash.
At my kids’ school, parents are trained from pre-K onward to send in any “beautiful junk” they amass at home: egg cartons, shoe boxes, packing peanuts, etc. It is all recycled by the kids into artwork, some of it pretty splendid.
Here’s a neat look at the “beautiful junk” being amassed by Intellectual Ventures, the invention company near Seattle we wrote about in SuperFreakonomics.
Tim Donaghy’s 2007 arrest for betting on N.B.A. games, including games that he refereed, shocked basketball fans. Despite his astounding betting success rate (70 to 80 percent), Donaghy claimed that he never fixed N.B.A. games but rather used insider information, a claim that the N.B.A., the F.B.I., and the U.S. Attorney’s office were unable to disprove.
Each week, Fred Shapiro invites readers to submit quotations whose origins they would like him to trace, using The Yale Book of Quotations and his own research. Here is the latest round…
Yes, the U.S. healthcare system is full of inefficiencies which lead to bloated costs. But no, that’s not the reason that U.S. longevity ranks only 29th in the world.
More than 4,000 teams of people recently raced to determine the location of ten red balloons released across the U.S., as part of an experiment designed to “explore the roles the Internet and social networking play in the timely communication, wide-area team building, and urgent mobilization required to solve broad-scope, time-critical problems.”
Ralph Keeney, a decision analyst at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business, uses decision sciences to give “practical and usable advice” to help people make decisions, from lifestyle choices to management strategies.
Climate officials from around the world have assembled in Copenhagen for two weeks to address global warming. Here’s an interesting article from today’s Guardian. Highlights:
Contributor Ian Ayres sees two subtle shifts in methodology between Freakonomics and SuperFreakonomics.
Is there price discrimination among iPhone apps that translate between languages?
Planet Money recently interviewed Elinor Ostrom, this year’s Nobel prize winner and an expert in the tragedy of the commons about global warming. Ostrom believes the solution to climate change will come not from government initiatives but from people in communities around the world. “I think we are stupid to sit around and wait and wait and wait,” she says.
It’s legal to give certain things away for free, and illegal to sell them. Sex, for one. A few more of our favorites are inside this post. Can you think of other examples where money doesn’t necessarily make a practice illegal, but at the very least taboo or socially repugnant?
A group of civic activists in Los Angeles plans to start giving “Gang Tours” — taking busloads of tourists through some of the most dangerous parts of the city — in hopes of “sensitizing people, connecting them to the reality of what’s on the ground.”
We recently solicited your questions for George Atallah, the assistant executive director of external affairs for the N.F.L. Players Association. Atallah responded in a fashion that I believe is unique among all previous participants in our reader-generated Q&A’s: he answered every question you asked. If thoroughness counts for anything – not to mention candor and the willingness to engage sticky subjects – then the players would seem to have strong advocates in Atallah and his boss DeMaurice Smith.
Scientists in the U.K. and Slovenia have developed a new, new technique for dating old books that’s far less damaging than the typical methods which require destroying part of the book.
Great monopoly example: a student writes that his family was fortunate to have the Bumper Dumper, produced by the Uncle Booger Company, attached to their SUV on a recent trip.
As the SuperFreakonomics chapter on global warming suggests, solutions that are initially viewed as repugnant sometimes gain acceptance over time. Consider, for example, that environmental groups have supported a “last-ditch effort” by Illinois environmental officials to dump a toxic chemical into a canal. The purpose?
Last post I started a series on the different ways men and women travel. The disparities are many, and go back a long way; after all, Eve and not Adam took the first family grocery-shopping trip, and Noah, not his anonymous wife, built and drove the first recorded vehicle.
In the days of the walking city, women (at least middle- and upper-class women) largely stayed close to home; walking long distances down filthy, chaotic, and dangerous streets was simply seen as unladylike.
Since the onset of the current financial crisis, political and economic pundits have loudly proclaimed the end of American economic dominance. U.S. policymakers are struggling to revive the economy, establish new industrial competencies, and remain globally competitive. Meanwhile, in a small, young, constantly embattled country across the globe, old-fashioned entrepreneurialism is alive and well. Israel, just 60 years old and with a population of 7.1 million, has emerged as a model of entrepreneurialism that countries at all stages of development have tried to replicate.
A site called Oobject features juxtaposed shots of cities before and after major events like war, natural disasters, and “property speculation.”
When I’m upset about the minor annoyances of life, I sometimes find it helpful to think of the price I’d charge for enduring the annoyance. For example, when my wallet was stolen, I wondered how many dollars would someone have had to pay me to consent to the taking.
After jump-starting the economies of Somali fishing towns, local pirates are taking their local business further by setting up “stock exchanges” that host 72 pirate gangs or “maritime companies,” a Reuters article reports.
In the 10 days since we first blogged about “ClimateGate” – the unauthorized release of e-mails and other material from the Climate Research Unit (C.R.U.) at East Anglia University in Norwich, England – it’s become strikingly clear that one’s view of the issue is deeply colored by his or her incoming biases. No surprise there, but still, the demarcation is clear. One of the best indicators: when you stumble onto a blog post about the topic, you can tell which way the wind is blowing simply by looking at the banner ad at the top of the site: if it’s for an M.B.A. in Sustainable Business, you’re going to hear one thing about ClimateGate; if the ad shows Al Gore with a Pinocchio nose, meanwhile – well, you get the idea.
Jason Kottke explains how the H1N1 vaccine is made — including the step where part of the virus is injected into eggs, where it incubates for two to three days before being removed.