For a Freakonomics t-shirt and a signed copy of the book: What is the most notable thing that my wife Jeannette and LeBron James have in common? The first person to guess what I have in mind wins. None of the wimpy stuff Dubner does, giving away a second prize to people who answer the question correctly, but later, giving . . .
Wouldn’t you like access to a “database of human feelings,” a live harvesting of emotion from blogs around the world? Here it is: WeFeelFine.org. It isn’t only U.S. real-estate agents who have been accused of anti-competitive practices; it’s happening in Canada, too. Were you aware that there is an international competition for the best beards and mustaches? I wasn’t either. . . .
It is a strange coincidence that Ohio State and Florida played for the national championship in both college football and basketball this year. What are the odds of something like this happening in the two premier sports? Let’s assume (1) there are 50 universities that have a shot at winning each of these national titles, (2) all 50 of these . . .
As reported by Scott McCartney in today’s Wall Street Journal, U.S. airlines will begin offering wireless Internet access within a year. VOIP calls will be prohibited for now; but airborne phone use may well become a reality one day. Here are the salient details: AirCell will install equipment on airliners that will act as a WiFi hotspot in the cabin . . .
In this week’s issue of Newsweek, Jonathan Alter writes a chillingly matter-of-fact article about his battle with cancer. I had the pleasure of having brunch with Alter a year or two ago. He is as intelligent and likable in real life as he is in his writing.
In the letters section of the Wall Street Journal recently, a reader named John Tagliamonte wrote in to comment on a Journal piece exploring how much money parents should give a child when the kid loses a tooth. Tagliamonte’s son lost his first tooth when he was nearly seven; the parents didn’t know how much to pay, so they asked . . .
This blog has just turned two years old. We wouldn’t be writing if you weren’t reading, so thanks for reading. We are thinking about beefing up the blog with more content and features. So we need some hired help — an editor/producer, probably full-time or close to it, ideally located in NYC. This person should have good ideas, excellent copy-editing . . .
Here’s an interesting paper from the British Medical Journal which argues that children’s anti-social behavior can be significantly altered by training their parents to be better parents. (And here is the BMJ‘s editorial summary.) The paper’s authors conducted a randomized study with 153 socially disadvantaged Welsh parents with children aged 3 or 4. Some of the parents were given a . . .
Congress has taken note of the shortage of donated organs, and has proposed an incentive to increase donation: a commemorative medal to honor organ donors. Alex Tabarrok at Marginal Revolution sums it up thusly: “Millions for medals but not a cent for compensation.” I am sure the congressmen and senators mean well, and we here at Freakonomics are firm believers . . .
Emily Oster told me just yesterday that she didn’t start thinking about missing women until she was in graduate school. Now it is revealed in the Everit St. Weekly (see page 3) that she actually began the research at age 9. Knowing she spent more than 15 years working on the project, it is easier for me to understand how . . .
Remember the San Francisco Chronicle reader who railed against the paper’s use of the phrase “pilotless drone”? (If so, you may also recall that we wondered if the reader was Matt Groening pulling a stunt.) Well, the pilotless-drone guy is back with another assault on the Chronicle, this time over a headline containing the phrase “Four-Year Anniversary,” which he declares . . .
M. Scott Taylor, an economist at the University of Calgary, argues in a new working paper that the epic 19th-century slaughter of American bison — with 10 to 15 million buffalo killed on the Great Plains in barely a decade — was driven by a technological advance and a profit motive that both came from Europe. (Incidentally, this makes me . . .
Devin Brewer, a folkish singer-songwriter from Seattle, has co-founded a music-downloading site called SongSlide that lets musicians post their music for sale and lets buyers pay what they wish for the songs, with a $.59 minimum. The higher the amount, the larger a percentage goes to the musician. Brewer wrote to say that his site was inspired in part by . . .
We ran a little contest here the other day, asking you to guess the next selection of Oprah Winfrey’s book club. The selection, announced yesterday, was a big surprise: The Road, by Cormac McCarthy. How surprising was this pick? Here’s how Tirdad Derakhshani summed it up in today’s Philadelphia Inquirer: Remarkable by any standards sacred or profane, haute culture or . . .
Imagine that you are an editorial writer at a newspaper. In honor of the annual celebration of government transparency known as Sunshine Week, you decide to write a column that includes a link to a public-records database that lists names and addresses of all members of a certain population. Now, try to imagine which of the following databases might provoke . . .
When faced with the opportunity to read a book by someone who isn’t by profession a writer, I always go for the doctor. It is the rare book by the businessman or entertainer or politician that I thoroughly enjoy; and lawyer-writers may be the worst of the lot. But doctors! Often, I love them. Arthur Conan Doyle was a marvel. . . .
A Texas State Senator has been ridiculed for his proposal to pay women $500 if they show up at an abortion clinic, elect not to have an abortion, and then give the baby up for adoption. Honestly, though, is it really such a bad idea? What if he left out the part about visiting an abortion clinic? Does it make . . .
I previously blogged about a woman who had the odd hobby of clipping newspaper articles for crimes where the perpetrator had the middle name “Wayne.” The blog News of the Weird also has reported on this phenomenon. The latest gruesome crime out of Texas doesn’t break the mold: What, neighbors at the Red Oak Place apartments wondered, was going on . . .
It is hard to tune out all the talk about obesity in this country. In the past, such talk has led me to ponder how serious the problem really is, how obesity is measured, etc. It has even led to the suggestion that higher oil prices may help curtail U.S. obesity. Now here is a new working paper called “Why . . .
Yes, Freakonomics is ruining the dismal science, according to this article in the New Republic [reg. req’d]. For what it is worth, I disagree.
Are there more people living on Earth today than at all other times combined? Nope. The British Medical Journal is very critical of the international publishing company Reed Elsevier: “While promoting world health through its publications, including the Lancet, Reed Elsevier also organises international trade fairs for the arms industry. By facilitating the sale of armaments, Reed Elsevier is directly . . .
According to this squib in the New York Times (fourth item down), the newest selection in Oprah Winfrey’s book club will be announced on Wednesday, March 28. Here is the book’s page on Amazon.com, which says that the book is published by Vintage Books (one of Random House’s paperback imprints) and is 304 pages long (although the page counts listed . . .
A blogger named Ganesh Kulkarni discovered that the commuter trains of Mumbai serve six million passengers daily but the system isn’t equipped to check everyone’s ticket. Instead, Kulkarni writes, ticket agents conduct random ticket checks. This has given rise to a form of cheating that is elegantly called “ticketless travel.” Although it’s probably not very common to get busted for . . .
When Freakonomics gets published in a new language, they always send me a couple copies. I just got the Serbian version: The first thing I noticed is that it is a pretty sad looking apple/orange on the cover. The second thing I noticed is that it was written by Stiven D. Levit and Stiven Dz. Dabner. Isn’t it strange to . . .
Seeing this article about drones today reminded me of a conversation I recently had with a man I met at a conference. I would identify him by name, but I left his business card in my jacket pocket which is at home, so I won’t be able to give him direct credit until I get back home later. This gentleman . . .
Here’s an interesting Wall Street Journal article by Carl Bialik (“The Numbers Guy”) on how authors (and their public-relations firms) try to push a book to No. 1 on Amazon.com or Barnes&Noble.com: For $10,000 to $15,000, you, too, can be a best-selling author. New York public-relations firm Ruder Finn says it can propel unknown titles to the top of rankings . . .
Freakonomics is apparently something of a black cat. It’s gotten students thrown out of class. It’s gotten a tech consultant thrown off his job. But now the news is even worse: Freakonomics has thwarted love. Here’s the story, in an e-mail we received recently from a guy named Phil: Fellas, I was recently dating a girl. Nothing serious, but I . . .
Quite by accident, I’ve blogged three times on this site about Happy Feet: 1. Whether Savion Glover, the human tap dancer behind Mumble’s moves, got sufficient credit; 2 When Glover himself took in a showing of the film, with his own child in tow; and 3. Whether the success of films like Happy Feet have raised awareness of global warming. . . .
The business woes of the U.S. newspaper industry, and of most other traditional media, have been exhaustively chronicled, most vigorously in newspapers themselves. (I sometimes think that the entire journalism/ music/film/TV industry just needs a 5-year bridge loan to help it safely migrate to the digital future, when online distribution and advertising are robust enough to support them.) So it . . .
An article in today’s Wall Street Journal asserts that, while various life skills seem to deteriorate as people get older, our skill at making personal-finance decisions doesn’t peak until the ripe age of 53. “Baseball players are said to peak in their late 20’s,” writes David Wessel. “Chess players in their mid-30’s. Theoretical economists in their mid-40’s. But in ordinary . . .