Archive for 2009
« Previous EntriesParadox of Choice
Sunday, November 22nd, 2009A friend of mine, an aspiring ecologist with a blog of his own, sent me a link to Barry Schwartz’s 2005 TED talk on the paradox of choice. Schwartz, a psychologist, has written a book with the same title that I have not read. The video is entertaining and thought-provoking. Schwartz argues that too much […]
Ethics of the Truth
Tuesday, November 17th, 2009A video circulating around the internet is disturbing. An aspiring NFL cheerleader had a negative reaction to a season flu shot. It activated dystonia disorder. If you haven’t seen the video you should look it up on YouTube. Note: Video previously embedded was removed from YouTube.
YouTube comments express skepticism, compassion, but most of […]
Secret Menus
Thursday, September 24th, 2009As happy as I am with the buzz generated by my last post, I feel the need to update so new visitors are greeted with something a little more upbeat. A post about fast food and cable television (the keys to a good life) seemed to fit the bill.
Tyler Cowen recently blogged about secret menus […]
Rape Statistics: 1 in 4?
Friday, September 11th, 2009My university recently hosted a forum on rape for female college students. They emphasized that rape is a serious issue on campus using statistics. Fact: 1 in 4 college women have either been raped or suffered attempted rape. At least that is what women’s centers at colleges around the United States claim. That’s scary high. Too […]
Hot Dog Pricing Paradox
Wednesday, September 9th, 2009Over Labor Day weekend I visited Chicago and spent Sunday afternoon watching Boston pummel the White Sox. Walking into the ballpark I had noticed a stand selling premium Chicago-style hot dogs with all of the fixings. While I was tempted, the ballpark level prices dissuaded me. Fortunately, on this particular day the ballpark was running […]
Lessons from My Laundromat
Wednesday, July 15th, 2009In the current hard economic times, most businesses have been lowering their prices. Burger King reduced the price of their daily specials from $4.50 to $3.99. Car companies are offering to forgive your monthly payments if you lose your job. Frito Lay is putting more chips in their bags for free. However, I’ve also noticed […]
Economics in Wired: Two Articles Worth Reading
Tuesday, June 23rd, 2009I came across two recent articles in Wired that I found really interesting. Here’s a brief overview and commentary:
Tech Is Too Cheap to Meter: It’s Time to Manage for Abundance, Not Scarcity
It costs Netflix about a nickel to stream a 2 hour movie to your PC. Wired editor Chris Anderson argues that data storage and […]
When Signaling sends the Wrong Signal
Monday, June 22nd, 2009Google became the world’s most popular search engine by radically increasing the relevance of search results. It was able to do so by rewarding sites that received a lot of links from other sites. Links from popular sites were worth more than links from obscure sites. The popularity, or rank, of a site became known […]
My Question for Twitter’s Founder
Sunday, June 14th, 2009The Freakonomics blog periodically solicits questions from it’s readers to ask prominent and interesting people. Most recently, Biz Stone, the cofounder of Twitter and entrepreneur responsible for Blogger and Xanga was featured . I submitted a question that was included in the interview. Below is my question and his response:
How do you consistently get the […]
Has the Internet Made Advertising Obsolete?
Friday, April 3rd, 2009Eric Clemons over at Tech Crunch argues so in this thought-provoking article. His points are:
Consumers do not trust advertising. (References Dan Ariely of Predictably Irrational)
Consumers do not want to view advertising
Consumers do not need advertising
The crux of his argument is that the internet has made information so widely available that advertising no longer […]
« Previous Entries