South African reader David Drew pointed me to this report, stating that one of South Africa’s political parties has called for an investigation of the “extremely suspect” March 3rd South African National Lottery after it yielded a record nine jackpot winners (as opposed to the typical 0-3 winners). The evidence given to support claims that [...]

Here’s a twist in our discussion of specialized online dating: a 26-year-old Australian ad salesman has created a tongue-in-cheek site meant to “weed out” the “ugly, unattractive, desperate fatsos.” Called Darwin Dating, it has since gained popularity and led to several happy matches.
Craigslist posters are selling their time this week by offering to stand in [...]

I have no idea what effect pornography has on you, but veterinarian Kannikar Nimtragul hopes that a daily dose of X-rated videos will do the trick on his client.
(For an economist’s take on the effects of porn, see this earlier blog post.)

I am currently in the process of hiring a new assistant. (Yes, Nicole has been here for more than a year, and I vow at the outset to hold no assistant captive for much longer than that.) I posted an ad on Craig’s List and received roughly 200 resumes. Many of them are impressive. From [...]

June 29 is National Ducks and Wetlands Day, offering yet another chance to celebrate the existence of water creatures headed for likely destruction.

Our British publisher, Penguin U.K., continues to delight and astound us with their marketing cojones. How would you like to come across this new poster in the Tube? It is perhaps not surprising that Penguin won a big marketing award this year for their work on Freakonomics. It should be noted that the “3 million [...]

We’ve written about the power of “lucky 8s” to influence stock decisions. Now, with 7/7/07 approaching, LiveScience takes a look at the many people planning major life events for that signal day.

In a dose of bad luck, the Japanese man who holds the world record for hot dog eating has severely injured his jaw during [...]

Our recent New York Times Magazine article on the use of cash-back transactions in home sales produced a mountain of e-mail responses. Among the most interesting was this one from New York attorney Nishani Naidoo, a former real estate lawyer and member of the New York State Bar Association’s Real Property group. He has been [...]

Tomorrow marks the iPhone’s official release to the public, in what will be one of the most hyped and anticipated product debuts in history. So far we’ve seen prediction markets making odds on everything from sales figures to the likelihood of spontaneous combustion. But what of the aftermath? Will economists, psychologists, sociologists and other researchers [...]

An article from the Cox News Service that was published in the State, the daily newspaper of Columbia, S.C., tells the story of a family camping trip gone wrong. You should read the article here. For those who don’t feel like clicking through, I’ll summarize:
1. A suburban Atlanta man named Chris Everhart, a former Marine [...]

June 28 is Insurance Awareness Day, which works well with tomorrow’s opening of SiCKO.

There’s been plenty of buzz this week over a paper by U.C. Berkeley PhD. student Danah Boyd, who argues that Facebook users are more socioeconomically advantaged than those on MySpace. According to Boyd, the Facebook crowd “tend[s] to come from families who emphasize education and going to college … They are primarily white, but not [...]

Companies like Gallup do surveys all the time on a wide range of issues: Who do you intend to vote for in the next election? What issue are you most worried about? Do you approve of the job George Bush is doing as president? Are you in favor of higher taxes? While we’ve expressed skepticism [...]

There has been a lot of talk, on this blog and everywhere, about the price of gas. Levitt wrote recently in favor of higher gas taxes. I went on Good Morning America last week to talk about factors that do and do not affect gas prices. (Among the events that matter: the International Olympic Committee’s [...]

Via Marginal Revolution: In his quest to explain the male-female wage gap in business, academia, and other fields, the economist M. Daniele Paserman studied the role that gender plays in competitive environments. Where’d he get his data? From professional tennis matches. Paserman argues that male athletes are generally more adept at handling high-pressure situations.
With iPhone [...]