Somali pirate town Boosaaso. (Photo: Jehad Nga/The New York Times) Who’s making money from the piracy that’s flourishing off the coast of Somalia? The pirates themselves seem to be raking it in. As the Guardian reports, pirates have made about $30 million from ransom payments this year, according to U.N. estimates; and they are demanding $25 million for the return . . .
KLM Royal Dutch Airlines is increasing the space between rows of seats on its planes. I’m not surprised — the Dutch are the tallest people on earth these days, as I discovered when I had to crane my neck around the Brobdingnagians in front of me in an Amsterdam movie theater. Like many Europeans, the Dutch are also very concerned . . .
Since last Wednesday, the torrent of junk e-mail coursing through the internet has been slowed dramatically, with 40 percent or more of it cut off at the source. The source of all that spam? San Jose, California. That’s where a group of servers responsible for much of the world’s spam had been operating until they were severed from the internet . . .
Ron Paul When we solicited your questions for Congressman Ron Paul shortly after the election, so many questions came in that we split Paul’s answers into two batches, the first of which was published last week. Here is the second. Like the first batch, they are well-considered and interesting throughout; they will surely make many readers continue to wish fervently . . .
I often get emails from blog readers asking me to shed light on some issue that, in the mind of the email writer, is a pressing social or economic issue. Sometimes it is a big issue like immigration or the financial crisis. More often it is something less mainstream, like election fraud or an unusual application of incentives. And then . . .
Blog reader Nick Turner sent along this photo of a Body Shop ad in San Francisco: Photo: Nick Turner He was surprised that the ad guarantees fair-labor conditions for workers in Italy: I thought fair-trade protections were for third-world workers. I wonder how the Italians feel about this designation. The ad didn’t outright call Italy third-world; but if it had, . . .
Eric Oliver is a colleague of mine at the University of Chicago. He is the author of the absolutely fantastic book Fat Politics: The Real Story Behind America’s Obesity Epidemic. He has some new and interesting insights on the “Bigot Belt,” which he has generously written up for the Freakonomics blog. The Bigot Belt By Eric Oliver A Guest Post . . .
Photo: lilivanili and shawnzam Yesterday I suggested that tastes may not be stable. And then last night, I had the chance to confront the data directly; my local restaurant was serving bacon ice cream. Bacon: Delicious! Ice cream: My favorite! The combination of bacon and ice cream: a direct threat to my views of economics. You see, every bite was . . .
Here are the stats and algorithms that explain why Kevin Garnett is an MVP. (HT: Phil Notick) (Earlier) Justin Wolfers‘s alumni magazine dubs him “The Seeker.” (Earlier) Who’s making the fat jokes? Stanley Druckenmiller is happy he didn’t buy the Steelers. Chicago’s schools have third-world math scores. (Earlier)
Below is a fascinating statement issued by Physicians for a National Health Program, “a membership organization of over 15,000 physicians [which] supports a single-payer national health insurance program.” You should read the whole thing but, in a nutshell: The people who receive donated organs in the U.S. nearly always have health insurance, while a significant fraction of the people who . . .
Larry Summers There is a lot of speculation about whether President-elect Barack Obama will choose Larry Summers to be his Treasury Secretary. But some people are openly opposing Summers’s appointment, in part because of controversial comments he made about women in science. It’s a close question, but I’m hoping that Obama appoints Summers. I have three reasons: First, Summers is . . .
Photo: cicilief In my last post, I offered several reasons why the urban riot has gone out of style in the U.S. However, France will not be spared the sword. I predict that the world will watch French cities light up in youth unrest in 2009, 2010 at the latest … 2011 for sure. I have been traveling to the . . .
Photo: Darwin Bell Beets are the new broccoli. Or at least they will be after Obama takes office on January 20, as the president-elect recently revealed his distaste for this vitamin-laden root vegetable. And Obama is not alone: Even as beet salads have become popular in trendy eateries, most American kids I know also reject the mighty beet. It’s a . . .
There’s a shortage of sperm in Britain! Apparently, Britain needs donations for about 4,000 women per year; to reach that number, about 500 sperm donors per year are required, while only 300 are currently registered. Things were fine until 2005, when a law was enacted allowing children of sperm donors the right to discover the identity of their father at . . .
Photo: davidsilver Americans are eating out less, driving down restaurant profits around the country. But some eateries are doing better. The first is McDonald’s, where profits grew 11 percent last quarter. A recession would seem to be good news for inexpensive food. The second is a plucky, five-year-old community kitchen in Salt Lake City called the One World Cafe. Thanks . . .
Do you love the smell of libertarianism in the morning? If so, today is a good day for you. Ron Paul Last week we solicited your questions for Congressman Ron Paul. There was such a big response (more than 400 comments) that we have split Paul’s answers into two batches, the first of which is posted below. Thanks to Paul . . .
Do you ever feel the guilt-stare from a barista as you’re sitting in a cafe enjoying its free wireless? The cheapest patrons will nurse a coffee for three hours, while many will cave at the rate of roughly one beverage (or baked good) per hour. Rather than guilting e-freeloaders (which puts strain on customer-barista relations), some cafes ban laptops or . . .
I’ve been mystified by the abundance of beauty parlors/barbershops in Germany — and by the low prices I’ve paid for their services. At home I pay $35 for a haircut by my wife’s hairdresser (nearly $1 per hair). Here, for an equal-quality haircut I pay $13 ($17). Why so low a price; why so many shops? Apparently haircuts used to . . .
Doug Mills/The New York Times I was struck by the photo above, which accompanied a Times article about President-elect Obama‘s first news conference. Not only does it give us a good look at many of Obama’s economic advisers, but it’s a great study of photo-taking body language. Many photographers I know have nicknames for the way people stand when they’re . . .
Even if you hate daylight saving time, you tell yourself: Hey, I shouldn’t be so selfish, it’s good for the economy, or for the environment, or for farmers, or something. Right? Photo: macinate Well, um, perhaps not. Consider a new working paper, “Does Daylight Saving Time Save Energy? Evidence From a Natural Experiment in Indiana,” by Matthew J. Kotchen and . . .
Photo: Terren in Virginia There were so many wild cards in this past presidential election that surely scholars will be poring over it for years to come. In light of Obama‘s victory, I had a thought that may already be on some scholar’s mind, although the proof of this thesis will hardly be simple. It goes like this. For years, . . .
Sean Masaki Flynn Last week, we solicited your questions for Sean Masaki Flynn, author of Economics for Dummies. In his answers below, Flynn addresses the economics of education, the relationship between aikido and economics, the importance of understanding opportunity costs, and how good shoes and nice teeth signal reproductive fitness. (Disclosure: Flynn himself had braces.) While we didn’t post Flynn’s . . .
Photo: Mika Hiironniemi I have been struck by the absence of collective protest over the actions of those in the financial industry. Free market advocates have been rendered impotent; why aren’t they up in arms that their belief system has been forever invalidated? Leftists watch as our elected leaders hand over the oversight function to the very companies that caused . . .
Photo: Michael (mx5tx) Every time the subject of guns comes up, whether on this blog or elsewhere (see here, here, and here for a few examples), the resultant discussion is predictably passionate. I am guessing that passionate gun discussions are taking place all over the country today with the news that an 8-year-old boy accidentally shot and killed himself over . . .
Many of us spend a lot of time giving away our creative and intellectual labor for free: editing Wikipedia entries, putting our music on MySpace, blogging, micro-blogging, uploading photos to Flickr, putting videos on YouTube, and pasting goofy phrases onto cat pictures. Plenty of web sites make a living from the content that people provide for free. But Andrew Keen . . .
Photo: la cola de mi perro Supporters and critics of physician-assisted suicide agree on at least one thing: terminally ill patients who take an early exit save the health care system money. Nationally, legal euthanasia for terminally ill patients could cut American health-care costs by $627 million per year (less than one-tenth of 1 percent of total expenditures), according to . . .
San Franciscans will soon vote on whether their city should decriminalize prostitution. Supporters say that taking prostitution out of the black market will improve the safety and health of sex workers, and shave $11 million per year off the city’s law-enforcement expenses. Opponents say the measure would encourage human trafficking, raise crime, and generally turn San Francisco into a magnet . . .
Photo: Joe Shlabotnik The other day I had a company come and remove two air conditioners from my office in order to clean them, store them for the winter, and return them in the spring. It wasn’t cheap: $269 for the first one and $249 for the second. But I like air conditioning, and I figured it was worthwhile to . . .
A few years back now, we wrote about the psychology professor Seth Roberts and his Shangri-La Diet, in which one attempts to lower the body’s set point by swallowing occasional shots of olive oil or sugar water. According to this article in Medical News Today (thanks, Jeff!), the olive-oil secret may truly lie in an appetite-killing fatty acid: A fatty . . .
From a reader named Eric Robinson comes this interesting bleg. (Click here for blegging information, and send your own requests here.) Photo: Uriba When I’m at a party and get asked what I do (I am an architect), I always hear one of the same five responses: + What kind of architecture do you do? + Hey, you can design . . .