Think Like a Freak

Think Like a Freak is the third book in the Freakonomics series, by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner, so if you’ve already read the first two, jump into this one now. As with the other books, it provides an entertaining and alternate approach to making decisions about common day problems. Like the title suggests, the idea is not just to produce new situations that they’ve analyzed from an economics perspective, but they want to try to teach the reader how to approach issues like they do. I’m definitely a fan of these two guys and even listen to their weekly podcast.

As a teaser, just look at some of their chapter titles: “The Three Hardest Words in the English Language” which are “I don’t know”; “Like a Bad Dye Job, the Truth is in the Roots”; “Think Like a Child”; “What do King Solomon and David Lee Roth Have in Common,” and “The Upside of Quitting.” In a way, this is like reading Malcolm Gladwell who just approaches life and it’s problems a bit differently. The authors suggest that it’s critically important to define the problem clearly, and to think small, not large. Read the book, they explain it better than I do.

SuperFreakonomics by Steven D. Levitt & Stephen J. Dubner

This is a sequel to one of my favorite books from 4 years ago, Freakonomics, and this one is at least as good as the first. The authors, both economists, have some unusual takes on common topics. Regarding drunk driving, they point out that there is just one arrest for every 27,000 miles driven while drunk. “That means, you could expect to drive all the way across the country, and then back, and then back and forth three more times, chugging beers all the while, before you got pulled over.” On a per-mile basis, a drunk walker is eight times more likely to get killed than a drunk driver, so “friends don’t let friends walk drunk.” On a different topic, one that makes me feel sorry for the men on the Indian subcontinent, “According to the Indian Council of Medical Research, some 60 percent of Indian men have penises too small for the condoms manufactured to fit World Heath Organization specs.” As the result, Indian men’s condoms malfunction more than 15 percent of the time, so Indian women run a higher risk of HIV/AIDS. How about this one about driving: “In 1900, horse accidents claimed the lives of 200 New Yorkers, or 1 of every 17,000 residents. In 2007, meanwhile, 274 New Yorkers died in auto accidents, or 1 of every 30,000 residents. This means that a New Yorker was nearly twice as likely to die from a horse accident in 1900 than from a car accident today.” Also, a street prostitute in Chicago is more likely to have sex with a cop than to be arrested by one. You might ask how is a street prostitute like a department store Santa. “Both take advantage of short-term job opportunities brought about by holiday spikes in demand.” There are lots of other points about kid restraints in cars, various aspects of global warming, and more. I’ll leave you with a final comment about global warming and things we could do about it. You know that the methane produced by cows has been identified as a significant factor in greenhouse gases, but did you know you could make a substantially positive impact from changing your diet. “You could also switch from eating beef to eating kangaroo – because kangaroo farts, as fate would have it, don’t contain methane.” This was fun and informative – read it.

West Coast Don