The Writer’s Coin

Maybe you haven’t read it yet, but Freakonomics is a great book. The sequel, SuperFreakonomics, should be out in the near future — so you better hurry up and read the first one. Never has Economics been so interesting. Anyway, if you don’t want to go and buy (or check out) the book based only on my flimsy recommendation, you’re in luck. The two authors have one of the most entertaining blogs out there. They cover very disparate topics like watching The Wire with drug dealers and whether or not connoisseurs can tell the difference between cheap and expensive wine (they can’t). Either way, it’s a great read and it’s also a great way to expose  yourself to a topic you typically wouldn’t care for (Economics) but that will still entertain you.

Moving on to the blog. They have a few people writing for it and typically you’ll see six or seven updates per day, which means the odds of finding something really interesting are pretty good. my favorite recent posts include a chat with the author of a book called Traffic, a bit on the probability of putts, and the HUGE series on watching my favorite show — The Wire — with gangsters to see what they think of the show. Since I’m still on season three of the show, I couldn’t read through the whole series because they’re watching season five I think, but once I get there I can’t wait to see what real drug dealers think about a show that feels more real than any other “cop show” out there. So says me and so says the critics.

The guy who wrote those posts, Sudhir Venkatesh, has dedicated a lot of his time and research to the sociology of gangs. His story is a pretty interesting one and I’m actually reading his book, Gang Leader for a Day, soon. He’s a pretty ballsy guy — he spends seven years “hanging out” with poor people in Chicago’s shadiest areas to get a feel for how people live and the way gangs function. I will be sure to put up a full review after I read the book.

On the topic of good reads, I’ve always felt that you’re only as good as the stuff you read, so I guess I’ll continue on the “good read” path. Here is an article written by the authors of Freakonomics that I found via their blog. “A Star is Made” deals with talent vs. hard work in the world of athletics. They start out with a strange bit of data: an inordinate amount of talented soccer players are born in the first few months of the year than in any other. Why is that? They go on to explain what they’ve found, comparing elite athletes to sports and describing the process by which people become good at what they do (no matter what it is). Essentially, this is a nature vs. nurture debate — were you born with talent or did you work for it?

Who knew economics could be so interesting?

Tags: dubner, freakonomics, freakonomics blog, gang leader for a day, leavitt, sudhir venkatesh, superfreakonomics, The Wire