No Camping in Faculty Offices
(Photo: Vernon Fowler) A student appears to have enclosed the commons: for the last two weeks, he has camped in a small public area in the vestibule of a suite…
Steve Hilton was the man behind David Cameron’s push to remake British politics. Things didn’t work out so well there. Now he’s trying to launch a new political revolution —…
The gist: the Nobel selection process is famously secretive (and conducted in Swedish!) but we pry the lid off, at least a little bit.
(Photo: Vernon Fowler) A student appears to have enclosed the commons: for the last two weeks, he has camped in a small public area in the vestibule of a suite…
Boris Johnson — mayor of London, biographer of Churchill, cheese-box painter and tennis-racket collector — answers our FREAK-quently Asked Questions.
The economist Kate Raworth says the aggressive pursuit of G.D.P. is trashing the planet and shortchanging too many people. She has proposed an alternative — and the city of Amsterdam…
What does social media do to our self-esteem? How is envy affecting our politics? And should you go to your high school reunion? Take the Seven Deadly Sins survey: freakonomics.com/nsq-sins/…
In the U.S., there will soon be more people over 65 than there are under 18 — and it’s not just lifespan that’s improving, it’s “healthspan” too. Unfortunately, the American…
…music on his website under a “pay what you want” model (sound familiar?), with all of his work falling under a Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial 3.0 License. As such, fans…
…the impact that open source software license B.S.D. used for Linux is having, or the copyleft (institution) used by Wikipedia, or the creative commons licensing regimes, or the global process…
…(e.g., Smith, Ricardo, John Stuart Mill, Marshall, and John Commons) who have been claimed as ancestors by modern economists. It is instead what developed in the post-World War II stabilization…
…launched the non-profit organization Creative Commons, which lets people make their work freely — and legally — available for public consumption (allowing us, for instance, to use Flickr images on…
squacco Thanks to Flickr’s Creative Commons (made possible, in part, by Lawrence Lessig), where Flickr users make their photography available for public use, we often use Flickr images to spruce…
The Obamas have a Flickr account. Its photos are labeled “United States Government Work” — definitely not Creative Commons material — and most of them look like standard PR material….
…and those interests it is our duty to follow. Henry John Temple, Viscount Palmerston, Speech in House of Commons, Mar. 1, 1848 In most human affairs, the idea is to…
When it comes to investing, people fail to notice the obvious shadow behind potential big gains. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons) Ready for a thought experiment? You have to pick between four…
…it down the line. In other words, the I.P.A. is sort of a patent version of the more well-known Creative Commons License that some use to keep otherwise-copyrightable goods accessible…
…plaza. (Photo: Chris Wood via Wikimedia Commons) The Boston Redevelopment Authority (BRA), in defiance of the Massachusetts Constitution, is trying to turn Long Wharf Park into a late-night restaurant and…
(Photo: NASA on The Commons) In a paper to be published in Astronomy & Astrophysics, researchers say they have found that “Tau Ceti, one of the closest and most Sun-like…
…As usual, a picture is worth at least a thousand words. Here’s a Trader Joe’s: (Photo: Anthony92931 via Wikimedia Commons) And here’s Hallatt’s Pirate Joe’s store: (Photo: Mike Hallatt) (Photo:…
…experiments on contribution to public goods in “commons dilemmas” — people help out at first, then get mad that others aren’t helping, and express their anger by not helping. One…
The endless pursuit of G.D.P., argues the economist Kate Raworth, shortchanges too many people and also trashes the planet. Economic theory, she says, “needs to be rewritten” — and Raworth…
…sales. The picture in Africa could not be more different. Approximately two-thirds of Africa’s population labors on small, dusty farms, frequently failing to produce enough food to feed their families….
…problems (bearing on all forms of life), thereby sparking an intense political response that continues to this day. The environmental movement thus began with a bang: a general environmental problem…
Also: Do we overestimate or underestimate our significance in other people’s lives?…
Congress just passed the biggest aid package in modern history. We ask six former White House economic advisors and one U.S. Senator: Will it actually work? What are its best…
Stephen Dubner’s conversation with the former longtime C.E.O. of General Electric, recorded for the Freakonomics Radio series “The Secret Life of a C.E.O.”…
How much does the President of the United States really matter? And: where did all the hitchhikers go? A pair of “attribution errors.” This is a “mashupdate” of “How Much…
Also: do we overestimate or underestimate our significance in other people’s lives?…
Also: What’s a food you love that seems disgusting to everyone else?…
