We’ve written before about online healthcare resources. Google is now entering the arena in a big way with a service that will store medical records and allow patients to access them from anywhere, according to Reuters. Called Google Health, the site is still in development, though initial screenshots are available, and currently goes by the codename “Weaver” — and is . . .
When it comes to Harry Potter, I was a late adopter. For years, I chuckled at the avid readers who camped out at book stores the night before the latest book’s release. My wife is hard to buy for, so when she mentioned half-heartedly that she should read Harry Potter because all of her friends were fans, I bought her . . .
For anyone who still thinks that pennies are worth saving (and haven’t yet been convinced by Dubner’s and others’ arguments), now there’s a reason to stop using them altogether: they might get you in trouble at school. NBC10 local news reports that 29 eighth-graders were given two days of detention after using only pennies to pay for their $2 lunches. . . .
Limiting child access to TV and Internet can lower their weight. (Earlier) Is online therapy the future of mental health treatment? Is Google recession-proof? (Earlier) 140-year-old math problem solved. (Earlier)
The political aficionados in Freakonomics Nation are probably doing the same thing that I’m doing right now — continually reloading the major news pages, in the hopes of finding some useful information. There won’t be any hard data for a few hours yet, and even then, it looks like there may be a long night of vote-counting ahead of us. . . .
Please welcome our newest guest blogger, the University of Texas economist Daniel Hamermesh. In a long and distinguished career, Dan has written about everything from the economics of suicide to the impact of the “beauty premium.” Because he kept turning up on our blog, including just last week, we thought we’d invite him to come on over and stay awhile. . . .
Media employees have plenty to complain about these days — layoffs, dropping revenue, and of course, accusations of bias. But now there’s a place for frustrated journalists to vent: AngryJournalist.com. It’s an anonymous message board with no dates, locations, or any identifiers save a number. Here’s a recent post: I’m angry because after a Sunday when I wrote the A1 . . .
I have not seen the film Beyond Belief by Beth Murphy, but I have heard spectacular things about it. The film tells the story of two Sept. 11th widows who are working to help widows in Afghanistan. Here is the trailer. For those of you in Chicago, the local chapter of the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) is . . .
Even if you don’t care one bit — and this probably describes the vast majority of Americans — you have probably heard by now that a Great Format War has been fought, and apparently won. The HD-DVD format for DVDs, backed by Toshiba, has lost out to Sony’s Blu-ray format. To be sure, there are some caveats. In this Computerworld . . .
Times metro reporter Jennifer 8. Lee has turned her fortune cookie explorations into a book: The Fortune Cookie Chronicles: Adventures in the World of Chinese Food. The book goes beyond just cookies, according to its Web site, which promises a look at the “enduring mysteries of Chinese cuisine through a mix of in-depth research and entertaining personal anecdotes.” No word . . .
Treasury Secretary in favor of axing the penny. (Earlier) Free books online: the debate continues. (Earlier) Are lawsuits the next phase in the fight against global warming? (Earlier) Reducing class sizes isn’t enough to fight achievement gap.
Photo: Callista Gingrich, Gingrich Productions Readers of a certain age may think of Newt Gingrich as a book critic, prolific author, and regular TV guest. But before that, he was one of the most powerful politicians in the land. A former history professor at West Georgia College, Gingrich was a long-serving congressman who, in 1994, masterminded the Contract with America, . . .
Here is a hard quiz for you. Very hard. Even if you are both knowledgeable about college basketball and clever, I doubt you will answer this quiz correctly. It is a two part question: I heard Roy Williams speak recently. (1) Who did Williams describe as “the best 3-point shooter he ever coached?” (2) On what basis did he make . . .
On a wintry night a few weeks ago, I was walking with Aaron Edlin across the Harvard campus when he casually claimed that the “voter’s paradox” wasn’t generally true — that it could be rational for people to vote for purely instrumental reasons. I did a double take, because the chance that my vote will change the result of any . . .
Who will win in Texas? The MySpace poll. (Earlier) Do fewer ad-clicks really matter for Google? (Earlier) Can everyone learn from online classes? (Earlier) Company charges for “privilege” of stopping junk mail-outs to customers. (Earlier)
On Dan Hamermesh‘s always-interesting blog, I read the first sentence of a recent entry: My grandson will be 13 in 13 months. I had to read it three times to realize that this was not a clever way of saying that he had a brand new grandson. The “months” at the end of the sentence tied to the second “13,” . . .
We’ve seen it before: companies turning to the general public to mine ideas for solutions to internal problems. Now there’s a central location for companies to solicit creative ideas from anyone with an Internet connection: Innocentive.com. The site lets “seekers” (i.e., private companies, government agencies, and nonprofits) solicit help from average Joes on issues from product development to engineering and . . .
Roland Fryer and Joel Klein are back at it again, trying innovative approaches to help students in the New York City schools learn. Fryer, who is a tenured professor at Harvard, a frequent co-author of mine, and Chief Equality Officer in the New York City school system, was the driving force behind a pilot program now ongoing in New York . . .
Player similarities in the NBA: a network diagram. A “Who’s Who” of modern physicists. How accurate are most psychology experiments?. Military experts fear “robotic terrorism.”
Last week, we asked for your vote to decide the best of the top five entries to our “6-word motto for the U.S.” contest. As promised, we tallied the votes received in the first 48 hours after posting. There was a clear winner: Our Worst Critics Prefer to Stay (194 votes) Here are the runners-up: Caution! Experiment in Progress Since . . .
Sudhir Venkatesh, Columbia sociologist and author of “Gang Leader for a Day,” is back once again for an eighth report after watching “The Wire” with a group of gangland acquaintances. His past reports can be found here. Where is Flavor? Readers of this blog may have noticed the absence of Flavor, the youngest member of “the Thugs,” from last week’s . . .
As a Valentine’s Day present to my wife, Jeannette, I flew her to romantic Council Bluffs, Iowa, and bought her an entry into the High-Heeled Poker Tour event being played there over the weekend. These are women-only events, with the winner taking home the coveted “high-heel” necklace. Just so she understood that this truly was a Valentine’s gift to her . . .
The Seattle Times reports that a bill has been introduced in Washington state that would require convicted D.U.I. offenders to use fluorescent-yellow license plates for a year after their driving privileges are restored. The bill’s sponsors see the license plates as a means of informing law enforcement that the driver has a history of D.U.I.s, and a signal to other . . .
New study tries to predict sources of future pandemics. (Earlier) “The Subprime Primer”: a mortgage crisis in illustration. What’s the worst company in America? Cast your vote. The white lies of Consumer Reports‘s undercover shoppers.
Last week, we cited a study finding that 16.6 percent of all pay-per-clicks on the Internet were fraudulent in the fourth quarter of 2007, up from 14.2 percent for the same quarter in 2006. The statistic, as reported by MediaPost, was compiled by Click Forensics, an independent auditor that has created the Click Fraud Index. Given what must be billions . . .
Yesterday, Ian Ayres blogged about his recent weight loss, and frankly, it’s a pretty impressive achievement. The secret, Ian tells us, is finding a clever way to solve the problem in which today’s best intentions are betrayed by our rather less determined selves tomorrow. Ian’s solution — committing to fine yourself if you fail — is pretty ingenious. So ingenious, . . .
We posted a pop quiz yesterday asking you to guess the identity of a mustached man on a long flight who read and snoozed before departing in his cashmere coat. My hat is off to the wisdom of the crowds. Even with these very thin clues, and even though it took quite a while — it was the 315th guess, . . .
Is the Internet really filled with pedophilic sexual predators lurking in a social network or chat room near your child? Not necessarily, according to 3 nationwide surveys done by the Crimes against Children Research Center at the University of New Hampshire in Durham. The first two surveys consisted of responses from 3,000 teens who use the Internet in 2000, and . . .
Is Wikipedia more accurate than we think? (Earlier) Parentonomics to be published in Australia. Olympic athletes permitted to blog at the 2008 games. Does working in solitude lead to greater productivity?
I sat next to someone fairly famous yesterday on a long flight. He wasn’t at all talkative. Also, I think he had a cold. He read for a while, snoozed for a while, and watched a DVD on his Macbook. Disembarking, he put on a long cashmere coat. He also had a mustache. Who was he? The first person to . . .