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Posts Tagged ‘Freakonomics’

Junior Freakonomist Position

To everyone who responded to this help-wanted ad for a junior freakonomist: thanks, but also apologies — because I haven’t replied to anyone yet. Thanks to a small pile of deadlines and some computer trouble, I haven’t answered a single applicant, though I promise that over time I will answer all of you.



Help Wanted: Junior Freakonomist/Editor/Producer

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 . . .




Levit and Dabner?

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 . . .



Is Freakonomics an Anti-Aphrodisiac?

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 . . .



Capitalize on Whose Success?

A friend spotted this book in a store the other day, and thought it bore a certain resemblance to another book he’d seen. I have to say, I don’t get what a dollar bill has to do with an apple. But I was particularly tickled by the title: This is not the first book cover that’s a bit familiar. There . . .



Poker or Bridge?

What group of people do you think is more likely to have heard of Freakonomics, top bridge players or top poker players? Far and away it is bridge players. We ran some experiments at a big bridge tournament last week and used the Freakonomics name to help recruit volunteers. Many of the bridge players had heard of or read the . . .



Happy Birthday to the Freakonomics Blog!

The blog turned one today. It was never meant to reach its first birthday. It was never supposed to exist at all. On a whim, Dubner suggested we do a blog. I was hesitant. He assured me that we would just do it for a few months after the book was released, then we would let it die. The only . . .



A Very Good Year

Whatever the reason may be, Freakonomics had a very good year in 2005. It has been recognized in year-end roundups from Milwaukee to India and in publications specializing in sports, music, celebrity gossip, and, of course, economics and books. It’s been called everything from hip and sexy to dry and grating– and those were just the positive reviews. For those . . .



Name That Baby!

We’ve heard reports here and there of expectant parents plucking a name or two from the various lists of first names in Freakonomics, but these folks are taking it pretty seriously. Personally, I’d vote for “Lucienne Rachel,” even though I’d prefer “Lucienne Aviva.”



The World Has Gone Mad

Here’s concrete proof: an article in the new issue of Newsweek is headlined “Economics: Sexiest Trade Alive,” and credits Freakonomics with leading the way.



“It’s not called Freakonomics, Donald, it is called Freakonomi”

This season’s show “Apprentice” with Donald Trump ended with Trump asking the winner whether the runner-up, Rebecca Jarvis, should also be hired. The winner said, “The show is called ‘The Apprentice,’ not ‘The Apprenti.’ ” Not particularly important, but first let’s just note that if the plural of apprentice is “apprenti,” then by the same token our book should be . . .



Most Blogged-About Book of the Year

According to the New York Times, the most blogged-about book of the year is Freakonomics. Here is the complete list; and here is a rather exhaustive list of Freakonomics blog citations. (Thanks to Connie Sartain for the links.)



The Artist Speaks

Many of you have expressed confusion as to what the illustration accompanying the latest Freakonomics column means, so I went ahead and posed the question to illustrator David M. Brinley. He replies: “The couple is a metaphor for sexual desires and how his sexual identity has been influenced by the points made in the article. His ‘new’ identity and desire . . .



Lucky Sevens

The new issue of People lists the 10 best-selling movies, books, CDs, DVDs, etc. of the year. Freakonomics was the No. 7 book among those first published in 2005. (The new Harry Potter was No. 1 by a landslide.) Here, from the other categories, are the other No. 7’s. #7 movie: Madagascar #7 CD: Gwen Stefani: Love. Angel. Music. Baby. . . .



What a difference a week makes

Last week’s issue of The Economist gleefully (and a bit prematurely, I might add) reported that everything in Freakonomics was wrong. This weeks edition finds Freakonomics occupying a highly coveted spot as one of The Economist’s “books of the year.” We’re crossing our fingers regarding what next week’s issue will bring.



More End-of-Year Stuff

Now we learn that iTunes has named Freakonomics its Editors’ Pick for 2005. Very nice. That and $2.00 will get you a subway ride — unless, of course, NYC transit workers really do go on strike on Friday, as they are threatening, in which case $2.00 will get you one cup of strong Starbucks coffee to fortify you for a . . .



The Worst Review Ever?

Here’s what New York Magazine‘s year-end roundup thinks of Freakonomics: “This book has no thesis, an annoying title, a phony humility, and sundry other grating tropes.” Pretty grim, huh? But in fact the magazine gave Freakonomics a 2005 Culture Award. Here’s the rest of the blurb: “Yet it makes such interesting arguments and compiles such counterintuitive data that you can’t . . .



No, We Don’t Know What This Means Either

A bunch of people have asked what the illustration that accompanied our latest N.Y. Times column is supposed to mean. Honestly, I have no idea. If you want to see a considerably less abstruse illustration concerning Freakonomics, take a look at this. It was done by a Portuguese artist, Goncalo Viana, to illustrate our Times column as it is carried . . .



If You’re Not Too Exhausted to Vote Again …

On a few occasions in the past, we’ve asked you to vote for awards for which Freakonomics was nominated, and you did, and we were and remain grateful. Now, if you’re not too exhausted to vote again, there’s another award (albeit a very small one, given the posted vote tally), and it’s actually a little closer to home because it’s . . .



Freakonomics Illustrated

The person who made this web page is plainly crazy, in a really good way. It is a visual rendering of the Freakonomics chapter titled “Why Do Drug Dealers Live With Their Moms?” The coincidence is that, inspired by the amazing work of Edward Tufte, I have been thinking about how our next book (SuperFreakonomics, natch) should include visuals to . . .



Everything in Freakonomics is wrong!

Or at least that is the impression you might get if you read this article in today’s Wall Street Journal. I will post a longer blog entry once I have had time to fully digest the working paper by Foote and Goetz which is the basis for the article. For now, I will say just a few things: 1) It . . .



Freakonomics: Just Another Thing to Sh*t On

Although I’ve written a fair amount for magazines and newspapers, I always believed an inevitable drawback of such work was that today’s article became tomorrow’s bird-cage liner. That may be why this photograph is somewhat disheartening: by writing books, I thought I had escaped the whole write/read/poop cycle. The photograph may also represent some sort of cosmic payback for our . . .



Know Any Foreign Newspaper or Magazine Editors?

If so, you might want to let them know that our monthly Freakonomics column in The New York Times Magazine is now being distributed for secondary publication through The New York Times Syndicate. The column has already been picked up by a number of U. S. papers including The Boston Globe and The Las Vegas Journal-Review, and a number of . . .



Who Is Loyd Eskildson, and Why Does He Game the Amazon.com Review System?

There’s a Top 100 Amazon.com reviewer named Loyd Eskildson — that’s what he calls himself anyway — who is not only prolific but, um, hyper-current as well. What do I mean by this? Well, it seems that any time you see a review by Eskildson, it is near the very top of a given book’s page of reviews — even . . .



Huge in Canada

Well, we took our lumps in the U.K., losing out to “The World Is Flat” in the inaugural Financial Times/Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award. But here’s some consolation: it turns out we’re huge in Canada. Having grown up in upstate New York, I’ve got an “accent” that’s often mistaken for Canadian, and friends over the years have . . .



You Can’t Win Them All

I’ve just returned to my hotel in London, from the inaugural Financial Times/Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award, for which Freakonomics was short-listed. Well, you can’t them all. The award was won by Tom Friedman for The World Is Flat. As it turns out, this was the one book for which no author was present — Friedman gave . . .




Freakonomics on Ebay

I checked Freakonomics books for sale on Ebay for the first time since the book was published. 38 copies currently up for auction. None of them signed. Does anyone know what premium a signed copy goes for? The part I liked best was that 4 copies of the book were categorized under “Fiction.” I guess those sellers were not so . . .



O – H ….. I – O!

It is late Monday night, and Levitt and I just completed an entire day’s worth of Freako-chat in Columbus, capital of Ohio and proud home of the Ohio State Buckeyes. A buckeye, we learned today, is a tree whose nut looks just like a chestnut but is poisonous. We also learned the OSU cheer, which even we were able master . . .