The streaming music site Muxtape has returned as a free platform for musicians to promote their music.
Emerging in a time when cassette tapes had long been an anachronism, Muxtape became a go-to site for music fans to string together their favorite songs and share the virtual mix tapes with friends and internet passers-by. Founded in early 2008, the site quickly became ensnared in licensing disputes and was shut down last August.
That is what Andrew Rosenfield argues for in this extremely cogently argued piece, and I agree with him. He makes a number of points about the bailout that I hadn’t heard before. Rosenfield ends the article with the following sage words: The present practice of subsidizing shareholders and debt holders of large insolvent bank holding companies is unprecedented, improper, and . . .
The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation is offering three $5,000 prizes for the best new ideas that “nudge” people towards better health.
I have nothing against Abraham Lincoln — quite admire him, in fact — but I do think the penny has long, long, long outlived its usefulness.
I have said this time and again and, having been woefully ineffective in bringing about its end, vowed to shut up about it.
Over at CoreEconomics, Joshua Gans points out that Steve Levitt’s research is no longer judged to be normal economics. Or at least his work doesn’t belong with the “normal papers.” From the “content alert” for the latest edition of the European Economic Review: Or perhaps it’s our friend John List who is “special.”
Last week, we solicited your questions for Simon Rogers, the owner of the talent and modeling agency UglyNY. In his answers below, Rogers discusses, among other topics, why George Clooney probably earns more than William H. Macy and why finding ugly talent is harder than it seems. You’ll find more photos of his clients throughout this post. (You will be . . .
Ian Ayers recently blegged you about boy-specific or girl-specific Happy Meal toys from McDonald’s.
But forget about toys; when was the last time your doctor asked if you’d like to choose your child’s sex?
Interesting piece here by Washington Post columnist Steven Pearlstein about a relatively small North Carolina bank called Citizens South, which avoided bad loans, has remained profitable, and then applied for and won $20.5 million in TARP bailout funds. Writing on the eve of the testimony by eight gigantic bankers before the House Financial Services Committee, Pearlstein lauds Citizens South and . . .
Four weeks ago I invited readers to submit quotations for which they wanted me to try to trace the origins, using The Yale Book of Quotations and more recent research by me. Dozens responded via comments or e-mails. I am responding as best I can, a couple per week. Bill asks: I think that this is from Ambrose Bierce, but . . .
Today, as you’ve probably heard, is the 200th anniversary of both Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin. Lincoln always gets lots of ink, so it’s especially nice to see all the attention being paid to Darwin; this piece is particularly good.
As evidenced by this chart from the betting site Intrade, the probability of Slumdog Millionaire winning the Oscar for Best Picture has risen over the past two months right along with the probability that 2009 will be a year of recession (i.e., two negative quarters of G.D.P.): This correlation isn’t meaningful in any way. Lots of things rise (or fall) . . .
University of Chicago Professors Douglas Diamond and Anil Kashyap, whose description of the causes of the financial crisis is the most widely circulated post ever to appear on this blog, are back to explain the Geithner Plan in simple-to-understand terms, along with what they do and don’t like about it. For this post, they’ve also drafted highly respected Chicago economist . . .
When your co-author is your colleague and also your significant other, confusion often follows. Take this recent post by Arnold Kling on the causes of inequality, where he says: I think that Betsey Stevenson/Justin Wolfers marriages are another big factor. That is, when highly educated men start looking for wives who are stimulating companions as opposed to kitchen-floor moppers, this . . .
The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals upholds the earlier decision in my favor in the defamation lawsuit filed by John Lott against me. Knowing John Lott, U.S. Supreme Court, here we come.
The Los Angeles Times reports that membership at online dating sites has increased substantially this year; eHarmony, for example, was up 20 percent. In light of the economy, we wonder how many of these online daters joined up to do some gold-digging. They should be careful. As research by Gunter Hitsch, Ali Hortacsu, and Dan Ariely makes clear, income is . . .
In order to become a U.S. citizen, one has to complete the Immigration and Naturalization Service’s Form N-400. How long do you think it has been since someone answered “yes” to question 12(c) in part 10(b): Between March 23, 1933, and May 8, 1945, did you work for or associate in any way (either directly or indirectly) with any German, . . .
Photo: C.P.Storm Every time an opposing player is penalized at a University of Michigan home hockey game, the student fans begin chanting long strings of obscene epithets. After the first few times this happened, the band began playing loud music (lots of drums) to drown this out. This is a repeated game, with the students as the first-mover (strategy: chant/no . . .
The Australian has an excellent profile of Anders Ericsson, a psychology professor and Freakonomics favorite who has done seminal research on talent. I had the pleasure of getting to know Ericsson well when we both spent a year visiting Stanford’s Center for the Advanced Study of Behavioral Sciences six or seven years ago. His research was the inspiration for the . . .
I finally got around to viewing the PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) ad that NBC decided to ban from its Super Bowl coverage. I had imagined a rather sordid broccoli-loaded affair. But it turns out it was just like a Victoria’s Secret spot, only a bit more nutritious. The point of the ad was that “Vegetarians have . . .
Photo: flavouz Here’s a bleg asking what happened the last time you ordered a Happy Meal at McDonald’s. I’m particularly interested in whether you were asked a toy question and how it was framed. Here in Connecticut, when I drive through, I’m sometimes asked whether the toy is for a boy or a girl. Sometimes they ask “Do you want . . .
Gary Becker and Kevin Murphy write today in The Wall Street Journal about their concerns regarding the stimulus package. There are no two economists in the world who I respect more than Becker and Murphy. Whatever your political bent, when these two write something, you should think hard about their arguments.
The A.C.L.U. has done it again, but this time on a grand scale.
I published an academic paper back in 1996 that tried to measure the impact that changes in the prison population have on the crime rate. It turns out that this is a hard question.
As the Senate and the House look to reconcile competing stimulus plans, the big debate is whether to emphasize government spending or tax cuts. A new paper by the New York Fed’s Gauti Eggertsson argues that the risk of deflation should tilt the balance to government spending. Our current problem is deficient aggregate demand. The government can raise total spending . . .
Reuters reports that the “cash for clunkers” program, which I criticized in an earlier blog post, has been removed from the stimulus package. I wish I could say that the reason for abandoning the program was that policymakers had come to understand the likely adverse economic consequences of the program. The real explanation, as usual, appears to be political, not . . .
How about a blogger stimulus? (Earlier) Being murdered by a pacemaker hacker is possible, but highly unlikely. (Earlier) The Brian Lehrer Show wants your “uncommon economic indicators.” The streets of Central America proclaim a different football champion than we do. Photo from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
Amory B. Lovins is the energy maven’s energy maven, viewed variously as a visionary or a heretic in his assessments of how the U.S. and the world should be generating and using energy. More specifically, he is the chairman and chief scientist at the Rocky Mountain Institute, a man who has won many awards, written many books, and, as if that weren’t enough, was a fan favorite for Energy Secretary when we asked blog readers a few months ago to give incoming President Obama some advice.
Newspapers are disappearing faster than alpine glaciers, and a new paper by journalist-turned-public-policy scholar Eric Pooley suggests the two may be related. Pooley’s paper argues that newspapers have failed as referees of the public debate on preventing climate change, reporting junk economics and good economics with equal weight. In these muddied waters, Pooley suggests, it’s harder for the government to . . .
Mike, a 30-year-old engineer, writes in with a real-estate dilemma in which he’s considering a tricky tradeoff: is it worth sabotaging his own credit rating in order to walk away from a house that’s worth far less than his mortgage? Already Been Blegged Here’s what Freakonomics readers have been blegging for lately. How to Handicap a Multi-Race Challenge? Book-Club Questions . . .
In a previous post I challenged you to identify which of six common stereotypes about transportation and land use in Los Angeles is actually true. The first is that Los Angeles has developed in a low-density, sprawling pattern. Answer: False. As of the 2000 census, the Los Angeles region’s urbanized area had the highest population density in the nation. Yes, . . .
Apparently not. Consider this interesting passage from The Revenge of Gaia: Earth’s Climate Crisis and the Fate of Humanity, by James Lovelock: