We Read it So You Don’t Have to: ‘Superfreakonomics’
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Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, the authors behind Freakonomics, are back with a sequel, inevitably titled SuperFreakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes, and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance. Four observations from the dismal-science duo:
*Buy poor women TVs. In rural India, women are less likely to tolerate abuse and more likely to send their daughters to school when they live in a home with cable television.
*Rather than building levees to minimize damage from hurricanes, just prevent them. Large, floating cylinders in the Gulf of Mexico could cheaply push warm surface water deeper, cooling the ocean and disrupting the conditions in which hurricanes are born.
*Prostitutes face many dangers in their line of work—but the law isn't one of them. According to data from Chicago, streetwalkers are more likely to have sex with a police officer than be arrested by one. (Hookers' high season? The Fourth of July.)
*By analyzing the banking records of known extremists in the U.K., Levitt and Dubner identified the telltale signs of terrorists in the making. The best indicator: they don't buy life insurance.
© 2009
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