Quotes Uncovered: Twain or Not Twain
I’m back to inviting readers to submit quotations whose origins they want me to try to trace, using my book, The Yale Book of Quotations, and my more recent research.
I’m back to inviting readers to submit quotations whose origins they want me to try to trace, using my book, The Yale Book of Quotations, and my more recent research.
According to a new working paper that looks at Canadian compulsory schooling laws, an additional year of education leads to a 4 percent decline in the likelihood that someone identifies with a religious tradition.
Sales of eco-friendly household cleaning products have tanked thanks to the recession. Turns out our green conspicuous consumption habits only reach so far.
Trademarks are so significant in our economy that many firms and individuals register any mark they think may prove valuable. Which is why the system of private regulation of “skate name” trademarks among derby girls is so interesting.
James Altucher on his graduate school obsession with the Asian board game Go, and his attempt to enlist Google China founding president Kai-Fu Lee to help him make millions off of it.
On his trip to Seattle, Stephen Dubner encounters the best coffee he’s ever tasted. The recipe comes straight from two former World Barista Champions.
While the rich and famous can have subscriptions to concierge services (such as the famed Quintessentially) to plan a vacation or book opera tickets, a recent Princeton grad is trying to bring such amenities to the masses. Harry Schiff, class of 2010, has started an online market for errands. He says he was sitting around craving a sandwich when the . . .
For years, linguists believed it impossible to trace the genealogy of human language past about 9,000 years ago, when Indo-European tongues split somewhere near present-day Turkey. A new study out of the University of Auckland indicates that split is but the first among many, in a tree whose roots extend all the way to southwestern Africa, some 70,000 years ago. . . .
Bryan Caplan, a professor of economics at George Mason University and a blogger for EconLog, has written a new book called “Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids: Why Being a Great Parent Is Less Work and More Fun Than You Think.” And he’s been guest-blogging for us about parenting. I had a chance to interview Caplan yesterday for an upcoming Freakonomics Radio show called “An Economist’s Guide to Parenting.” He had a great deal to say on the topic, all of it interesting and much of it provocative. I think you will enjoy it as much as I did.
Robot to throw out first pitch at Phillies game. Brown University study: Genes dictate whether we learn from own experience or from suggestions of others. German court sentences three men in Europe’s biggest soccer betting scandal. Charts on beer drinking: global consumption goes up.
This month, Toyota sold its one millionth Prius hybrid in the U.S. In 10 years, this strange-looking vehicle with the revolutionary engine has claimed a spot among the best-selling cars. Pretty impressive. But are all those Prius owners thinking mainly about better mileage and a smaller carbon footprint, or is there another incentive at work?
A reader wants to know: How much energy is wasted each year by making ice cubes for all the cold soft drinks that Americans consume?
Columbia sociologist Shamus Khan went back to teach at his alma mater, the prestigious St. Paul’s School, nine years after graduating. He’s written a book about how society’s elite are brought up, and what behaviors they carry through life.
If you’re going to court, you better hope that judge had breakfast. Or just a break. A new study looked into psychological effects in the courtroom from the supply side: the judges. Researchers evaluated results from more than 1,000 rulings made by 8 Israeli judges and found that favorable rulings peaked at the beginning of the day, then again after lunch or a food break.
According to a new study by the London School of Economics, one in every three children in the U.K. between 9 and 12 has his/her own Facebook page, despite Facebook’s minimum age requirement of 13. Among 13-16 year-olds, that number shoots to 43 percent. Researchers noted that European children are taking undue risks online.
Photo: David Campbell 2 Kings VII discusses an incident in which the people of Israel are besieged and food prices are skyrocketing. A military officer scoffs when “a man of God” predicts that barley will soon sell for ½ shekel and fine flour for 1 shekel (very low prices). The officer is shortly trampled to death after the populace goes . . .
A new study surveying elderly Taiwanese men and women shows that senior citizens who engage in daily shopping are likely to live longer than their counterparts.
A new paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research suggests a sensible, non-ideological take on why health care costs rise faster than their efficacy. This echoes a recurring theme here, that it’s often the cheap and simple solutions that work the best.
The next battle in the Google Books dispute comes in a week, when lawyers on both sides meet to consider their next move after a federal judge rejected a settlement proposal. Should Congress step in?
In June, the first of our Freakonomics Radio programs will hit the public-radio airwaves. In conjunction with the launch, we’ll be doing a few live Freakonomics Radio events — in St. Paul, Minn, Los Angeles, and New York.
Last week, a severe outbreak of tornadoes tore across much of the southeast U.S., killing at least 43 people. Despite the destruction, meteorologists are working on a handful of advancements that should greatly improve our ability to predict tornadoes.
It’s been almost a year since the Deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf of Mexico, and more data is available on the magnitude of the spill. In a recent article, The New York Times describes the spill’s size as “some 4.9 million barrels of oil.” That led me to two numerical musings.
First, I wanted to make the number meaningful by comparing it to another large, famous spill: the Exxon Valdez. Its size is imprinted in my memory as 11 million gallons, which is about 250,000 barrels. So the Deepwater spill was about 20 times larger than the Valdez. In retrospect, that makes sense. The Deepwater well reached into a geologic formation. Whereas the Valdez was merely what one could take from another formation and stuff even into a big ship.
Water is a topic that’s come up repeatedly on this blog. We’ve written about attempts to do away with bottled water; why it’s a bad idea to ban bottled water; whether festivals should hand out free water; and the need for safe supplies of water around the world.
P&G recently sold Pringles for $1.5 billion to Diamond Foods. But do you know why the chip is so easy to eat? University of Chicago mathematics professor Benson Farb explains why the Pringle is a relativistic chip.
What do actual drug dealers think about economists’ research on drug dealers? NPR’s Planet Money asks the question of drug dealer Freeway Rick Ross, and gets some illuminating answers.
t’s time for the annual Name of the Year contest. The 2008 winner, Destiny Frankenstein, is still our favorite, but there are some strong contestants this year. Among them: Sanmorteeno Battle, Yolanda Supersad, and Dr. Loveday Conquest. Cast your vote here.
I’m back to inviting readers to submit quotations whose origins they want me to try to trace, using my book, The Yale Book of Quotations, and my more recent research.
Sometime around 1991, the standard coup d’etat morphed into something else entirely, according to a new paper by Nikolay Marinov and Hein Goemans: “[W]hereas the vast majority of successful coups before 1991 installed the leader durably in power, after that the picture reverses, with the majority of coups leading to competitive elections.”
The woman right next to me was alive one second, then a taxi came up on the sidewalk of 42nd Street between 6th and 7th Avenue, hit her and veered off, and now the woman was dead. This happened on the first or second day of my job at HBO. I tried to call 911 on the payphone (there were still payphones in August, 1994), and then I had to go. The woman was dead.
We took our visiting 12-year-old granddaughter out to dinner last night, and she insisted on ordering edamame, which I too love. I discovered it at age 60 and would never have seen it in the U.S. at age 12 in 1955. Earlier in the day, I had bought a cherimoya at the local grocery store.