Debating the Future of Water (3)
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Stephen J. Dubner (67)
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6 days, 11 hours
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If you’re looking to get your mind off the financial disaster and instead focus on another potential disaster — the worldwide water supply — you might want to check out The Economist’s online debate on the subject. From The Economist: It’ll be a two-week long, Oxford-style online debate on the topic of the global water crisis. As both an industrial input and a prerequisite of life, water has become extremely scarce for roughly a billion ...
Do Good Grades Predict Success? (7)
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Wall Street Jokes, Please (1)
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Stephen J. Dubner (67)
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Freakonomics (211)
1 week, 6 days
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Wall Street has always been a legendary joke generator - with a specialty in gallows humor. So I ask our readers: in this very unfunny time, what are the Wall Street jokes of the moment? To prime the pump, I offer up something a wise gentleman told me the other night, prescribed to make all Americans [...]
John Steele Gordon on the Financial Mess: Greed, Stupidity, Delusion - and Some More Greed (4)
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Stephen J. Dubner (67)
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2 weeks, 1 day
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John Steele Gordon, an author who specializes in financial and business history, has a helpful pedigree: both his grandfathers held seats on the New York Stock Exchange. His 2004 book An Empire of Wealth: The Epic History of American Economic Power is a remarkably vivid chronicle of every boom and bust that our economic history [...]
If Not I-Banking, What? (1)
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2 weeks, 5 days
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The academic year is freshly underway and the financial markets, led by the investment banks, are in deep distress. Which has me wondering: for those of you pursuing a finance or economics degree or perhaps an M.B.A., how have the events of the past several months altered your future plans? For quite a few years now, [...]
How to Think About Sex? A Freakonomics Quorum - Freakonomics - Opinion - New York Times Blog (2)
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Stephen J. Dubner (67)
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3 weeks, 4 days
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Photo: Mai Le When it comes to sex, some things change (internet pornography and contraception) while others stay the same (political scandals and teen pregnancy). The externalities of sex, positive and negative, are so strong that some people even have wondered if a sex tax is a good idea, or wished at the very least that people [...]
McCain Pulls Ahead Where It Really Matters (2)
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Stephen J. Dubner (67)
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3 weeks, 4 days
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For those of you who put more stock in betting/prediction markets than in electoral polling, here's what you've been waiting to hear: John McCain has just narrowly pulled ahead of Barack Obama on InTrade. This is news. It is perhaps not so surprising to see McCain/Palin get a big convention/Palin-novelty bump in opinion polls, for such [...]
A Word on New Words (4)
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Stephen J. Dubner (67)
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3 weeks, 5 days
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It is always fun to see language grow. (No, I don't mean menu language.) One of my favorite rising words is "kindergarchy," described here by Joseph Epstein as "rule by children," a condition whereby "children have gone from background to foreground figures in domestic life, with more and more attention centered on them, their upbringing, [...]
Adventures in Menu-Reading (1)
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3 weeks, 6 days
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There's a restaurant I like called Le Pain Quotidien, a Belgian chain with good (and health-conscious) food, known for its baked goods, strong coffee, and rustic wooden decor that includes one large communal table. It isn't inexpensive, but it's the kind of place that doesn't mind if you camp out for a while and play [...]
Yet Another Reason to Hate Economists (1)
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3 weeks, 6 days
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It has been argued previously here that John McCain, among others, seems to harbor a pronounced dislike for economists. Well, you don't even have to be a politician to hate economists. Via Cory Doctorow at BoingBoing, here's a fascinating bit from an old paper by Robert Frank, Tom Gilovich (best known for his hot-hand refutation, and [...]
Your Movie Industry Questions Answered (2)
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Stephen J. Dubner (67)
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4 weeks
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Dan Glickman We recently solicited your questions for Dan Glickman, C.E.O. of the Motion Picture Association of America. In his answers below, he discusses, among other topics, the source of his piracy figures and why the ratings board isn't the "morality police." He also tells us what he thinks of the documentary This Film Is Not Yet [...]
McCain Doesnt Really Hate Economists, Does He? - Freakonomics - Opinion - New York Times Blog (4)
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Stephen J. Dubner (67)
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1 month
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Photo: soggydan Political rhetoric tends to be overwhelmingly simple while economic analysis is often needlessly complex. This is not news. But it does make for a big disconnect between what politicians say and what they hope to do - because if they publicly said what their economic advisers told them, voters would either riot or fall [...]
St. Paul Was in Minneapolis Last Night (2)
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Stephen J. Dubner (67)
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1 month
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"Tonight John McCain will be in St. Paul, but St. Paul will be in Minneapolis." Huh? That was a line spoken yesterday by Doug Wead at a political convention in Minnesota. The first "St. Paul" he mentioned was the city where the G.O.P. is holding its convention; the second one is Ron Paul, leader of the [...]
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PHAT Mommy said:
Ron Paul, not invited to speak at the RNC, held his own convention of "constitutionalists" yesterday in Minneapolis.
The Numbers on Teen Pregnancy - Freakonomics - Opinion - New York Times Blog (4)
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Stephen J. Dubner (67)
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It is amazing to me that in the several days after it was announced that the second-ever woman was nominated for a major-party vice-president slot, so much of the news has concerned her and her daughter's reproductive activities. Part of the reason to have a female candidate in the first place is presumably to be [...]
An Immodest Proposal: Time for a Sex Tax - Freakonomics - Opinion - New York Times Blog (9)
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Stephen J. Dubner (67)
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1 month
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Photo: Michael Karshis Whereby: + It has been observed that Democrats are generally in favor of taxation and Republicans are generally opposed to unnecessary sexual activity; and whereby: + The unintended costs of sexual activity are unacceptably high, particularly in the political arena (c.f. Messrs. Clinton, Foley, Craig, Edwards, and most recently one Mr. Levi Johnston, to name [...]
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Party People said:
The main problem with this is Democrats enjoy sex too much to tax it, and Republicans enjoy money too much to let the government take more of it.
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Tim said:
Ha!
How Big of a Deal Is Income Inequality? (15)
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Stephen J. Dubner (67)
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1 month, 1 week
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Retired neurologist William Bernstein is probably known for his investment books The Intelligent Asset Allocator and The Four Pillars of Investing. His two latest books, A Splendid Exchange: How Trade Shaped the World and The Birth of Plenty, deal with the history of world trade and economic growth, subjects he has agreed to blog about [...]
The Price of Olympic Competition (3)
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Stephen J. Dubner (67)
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1 month, 1 week
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There have been a lot of posts here about various wrinkles in Olympic competition: medal count, citizenship flexibility, outlying statistics, etc. Here's perhaps the smallest wrinkle of all, but one that I found fascinating. It falls under the "citizenship flexibility" category and concerns one Olympic athlete's name. We wrote in Freakonomics that the name a child [...]
A Newspaper Paradigm Shift? (3)
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Stephen J. Dubner (67)
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1 month, 1 week
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If you go to school for journalism, one of the tenets drummed into your head is the sacrosanct divide between the editorial and business sides of a newspaper. There is supposed to be almost no communication between the two sides, and certainly no collusion: i.e., you don't want an investigative series on a failed chemotherapy [...]
N.F.L. Questions (1)
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1 month, 1 week
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For those of us who look forward to the N.F.L. season more than any other sport season, here are a few random questions perhaps worth pondering: 1. Now that players' union head Gene Upshaw has died, is the N.F.L. inevitably headed toward a more contentious relationship between players and teams - and will fans suffer as [...]
