Le Freak

After Levitt and Dubner's best-selling and generally good Freakonomics, a sequel was inevitable, I suppose.

Superfreakonomics was the result. It is...OK. Freakonomics had the advantage that it was based on Levitt's long career of interesting, offbeat research. But, all the good stuff went into that. So, nothing was left for this book. As a result, they had to drum up some new material, which ends up being a) research other people have done, 2) cursory research Levitt and Dubner have done in the last two years, or c) wild speculation about research that might actually be done in the future. The book is well-written, some of the material is fun to think about, but there isn't much in here that has the feel of Levitt's research showing that school teachers in Chicago were systematically changing their student's answers on state mandated exams to make it look like the students did better than they actually did.

The global warming chapters have received the most attention--if you have been paying attention to the details of the global warming science instead of the press about them, there isn't anything surprising here. But, it will be a good introduction for people who have only seen the headlines. People like the kids in Janet's girl scout troop. Janet's greenhouse is now up and there are plants in it. Last week, her girl scout troop was over, so she showed them the greenhouse. Some of the kids were a be nervous going in. She found out why. When they were leaving the greenhouse, one of the kids left the door open. Several kids became immediately alarmed because the Greenhouse Gases were escaping.

The first chapter of Superfreakonomics has me a bit worried. I assigned the book in my introduction to microeconomics class. I hadn't read it when I assigned it, so I wasn't sure what it contained. Chapter 1 is all about prostitution. It is a combination of some research into lower class prostitutes and the prices they charge and then a nice puff piece about a high-end prostitute who gets $500 per hour from rich clients. The tone of the chapter is that it is good to be a high-end prostitute--high wages, easy work. So, here is my troubling thought--if some of the 18 year olds in my class decide after reading that chapter that this prostitution thing looks like a good career move, am I responsible?

The title of the blog post is a reference to a song that was very popular when I was in Junior High. You can relive it here.