As far as I know, American Indians did not invent casino gambling. They did, however, invent lacrosse, a sport more typically associated these days with the likes of young men at Johns Hopkins and Duke. But in a fitting and culturally resonant reallocation of resources, Indian tribes in upstate New York are now pouring profits from their specially licensed casinos . . .
Today is Friday the 13th, considered the ultimate day of bad luck in modern culture. While historians have yet to verify the root of the superstition, the Stress Management Center and Phobia Institute estimates that more than 17 million people are affected by fear on this day, causing up to $750 million in lost profits for stores, airlines, and other . . .
Steven Peisner, whom Dubner and Levitt wrote about recently in a column on identity theft, has made a career out of trying to stop people from hacking or otherwise stealing valuable information from websites. So Peisner’s ears perked up when he learned of Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott‘s announcement on May 31 that Texas now requires companies to shred documents . . .
Every once in a while I do something really stupid. In this case, it was to accept my friend Jeff Thomas‘ invitation to play in a celebrity-amateur golf tournament. (Just to be clear, I’m the amateur; Emmitt Smith is the celebrity in our foursome.) “It is totally relaxed,” Jeff said. “The celebrities play in a televised NBC tournament on the . . .
Tim Harford, the affable British economist who is a star of book writing, journalism, and even TV (his BBC program was called Trust Me, I’m an Economist), is now taking to the radio waves as well, at least in the U.K. His first radio documentary, Analysis: Repugnant Markets, airs today on BBC radio (3:30 p.m. EDT), and will be archived . . .
It is hard to predict, in nearly every pursuit, what will be popular and what will not. Blog posts are no exception. Sometimes a blogger posts something that would seem to generate a lot of interest and it fades without a trace; sometimes you post something that seems like no big deal and, for whatever reason, people care a lot. . . .
New Jersey governor Jon Corzine, unhappy with an official probe into the e-mails he sent to a former girlfriend who was also the state union president, has decided to swear off e-mail entirely. (In related news, stocks in smoke-signaling firms surged in overnight trading.) Meanwhile, Whole Foods CEO John Mackey has also found that old online exchanges can come back . . .
July 12 is Different Colored Eyes Day, celebrating both “diversity of eye color” and Heterochromia, a condition in which a person’s eyes are different colors. Should genetic engineering become widely available, traits like eye color could cease to become inherited traits, a development that critics cite as a danger to society.
My spam filter is so good that I barely ever get to see all the Nigerian oil-scam spams any more. But this one poked its way through today. It is always nice to see people thinking creatively. My name is Sgt Kenny Baker, Jr. I am in the Engineering military unit here in Ba’qubah in Iraq, we have about $10, . . .
Can a charitable act truly be called charitable when the contributor wants or expects a reward? In a new study, Princeton economics professor Harvey Rosen and Stanford graduate student Jonathan Meer examined this question using a specific case of incentivized charity: alumni donations. They found that the size and frequency of an alumnus’s contributions to his alma mater rise in . . .
July 11 is National Cheer Up The Lonely Day, an increasingly necessary task according to the National Science Foundation General Social Survey, which found that Americans are more socially isolated then in previous decades despite (or because of?) the growth of communications technology.
Fortune Small Business reports that a feud is brewing between two companies that provide inflatable torsos to serve as movie extras in crowd scenes. Industry leader Inflatable Crowd is being sued by competitor Crowd in a Box over patent infringement, while the defendant’s owner claims he came up with the idea on his own. (Hat tip: the Wall Street Journal‘s . . .
I’m reading a pretty interesting book called Blue Blood. It’s a memoir written a few years back by a Harvard-educated New York City cop Edward Conlon (who also wrote the New Yorker’s “Cop’s Diary” column under the name Marcus Laffey). I have the paperback edition, which means that the first three or four pages are devoted to positive reviews and . . .
Raise your hand if you hate libraries. Even though this blog doesn’t enable me to peer through the screen into your living room (yet), I am guessing there aren’t a lot of raised hands out there. Who could possibly hate libraries? Here’s one guess: book publishers. I am probably wrong on this, but if you care about books, hear me . . .
There was an interesting article in the New York Times sports section the other day about how the All England Club has kept the Wimbledon tournament free of pigeons since 1999 by employing a man named Wayne Davis to bring in his small flock of peregrine falcons. Until Davis came along, the pigeons were a real nuisance. “In the old, . . .
July 10 is Clerihew Day, marking the birth date in 1875 of Edmund Clerihew Bentley, the British writer who invested a four-line rhyming verse, usually biographical in nature and resembling a limerick, that came to be known as a “clerihew.” Bentley composed the first clerihew about Sir Humphrey Davy, the chemist credited with isolating and naming aluminum.
As enduring fans of the sport, we were glad to hear that ESPN2 broadcast its first coverage of the 2007 USA Rock Paper Scissors League championship, which took place in May at the Las Vegas Mandalay Bay. The single-elimination competition was won by Jamie Langridge from Odessa, Texas, who employed a “complex adaptive” strategy to take home the Bud Light . . .
This kid better have a great life, or he’s got a lot to answer for: a boy named Jack Falkner was born in Chippewa Falls, Wisc., on Saturday, 7/7/07, and he weighed 7 pounds, 7 ounces. That, at least, is what the hospital says. But think about it: if you were the person looking at Baby Jack’s scale, mightn’t you . . .
I blogged nearly a year ago about a study by the evolutionary psychologist Satoshi Kanazawa which argued that beautiful women sometimes marry unattractive men because of the following supply/demand gap: there are simply more good-looking women than there are good-looking men. One reason, Kanazawa said, is that beauty is a more valuable trait for a female, and is therefore accentuated . . .
Over the weekend, the Washington Post published an article suggesting that much of the decline in crime in the 1990s may have been due to the reduction of childhood lead exposure after the removal of lead from gasoline and house paint. This is an intriguing hypothesis. There is evidence on an individual level that high exposure to lead is harmful . . .
July 9 marks the start of Nude Recreation Week, during which you are encouraged to do household chores, exercise or telecommute in the buff . Nudist vacation destinations are reportedly the travel industry’s fastest growing niche market, taking in more than $400 million a year.
Tomorrow’s date is 7/7/07. If you believe in lucky 7’s (the influence of which we’ve written about before), it’s a good day. During a recent trip to Las Vegas, I was told by one casino executive that never in the history of Vegas have the hotels been booked so far in advance as they are for tomorrow. I predict that . . .
Bad news for retirees (and others) who want gigantic houses in Boulder, Colo.: local officials may enact home size restrictions. Under the proposal, residents would be allowed to build homes larger than 4,000 square feet only if they agree to invest in the preservation of agricultural or rural land in other regions. (Hat tip: J.C. O’Connell.) Here’s more on the . . .
The wheels seem to have come off the Tour de France. This year’s race, with a ceremonial start in London, is of course absent the retired Lance Armstrong, whom Americans learned to love and the French grew to hate in seemingly direct proportion. But the race this year is also missing Floyd Landis, last year’s disgraced winner, as well as . . .
It sounds as if Barack Obama has been listening to some economists (maybe even Austan Goolsbee): he has come out in favor of merit pay for schoolteachers. From an A.P. article: Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama told the largest teachers union Thursday that performance-based merit pay ought to be considered in public schools. Teachers at the National Education Association’s annual . . .
July 6 is one woman’s self-declared National Fried Chicken Day. If you don’t like her recipes, Chef Jeff has a good one in his book. Do keep in mind that, according to the Center for Disease Control, national obesity rates have more than quadrupled since the 1970s.
We’ve written in the past about the life-like struggles for resources and justice in online roleplaying games and universes. Now comes word that EVE Online, a sci-fi MMOG (Massively Multiplayer Online Game), has hired a full-time economist, Eyjólfur Guðmundsson, to help manage the game’s virtual economy. Insert your own joke. (Hat tip: Derek Guder)
Mirroring Levitt’s thoughts on doctors plotting terrorist attacks, the Wall Street Journal takes an in-depth look at Alan Krueger‘s findings that terrorists tend to come from high-income, high-education families. David Pogue of the New York Times points out that, in the midst of last week’s iPhone mania, most of us missed T-Mobile’s announcement of a new plan under which all . . .
Prediction markets. Are there any other two words that couple as nicely as those, at least to readers of this blog? The promise of a prediction market is simple and profound: if you ask a lot of people a question about politics or sports or Hollywood movies, and those people are motivated to answer it correctly, their collective judgment turns . . .
For years, I’ve begged my wife to let me buy a gun. The only reason I want one is that, if an intruder enters my house and tries to terrorize my family, I would like to be able to defend us. The baseball bat under the bed just doesn’t seem sufficient to do the trick. Never mind that I am . . .