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Sorry, but someone has to call BS so here we go.

First, presuming you are living in the 2000s and not a time traveler recent data suggests the average working woman makes 23% less than the average man. This DOES NOT try to control for any factors. When you control for factors even AAUW can only find at best a 7% difference. Some reports show the difference as low as 4.3%. Is there a detectable difference in pay between the sexes? Yes, but just barely. Obviously, as people have a hard time understanding these numbers, "Math is hard" is probably a real thing.

Second, the rest of your argument is not a complete lie so I have no problem with it. The argument, and studies, about how much is nature and how much is nurture have been going on for a really long time so there is probably substantial truth in both positions. That being said in the US the 'Tom Boy' description is a great example of how your 'freak if they don't conform to the pink unicorn princess culture' is a bit over exaggerated. (As a side note did you know that pink used to be a masculine color it wasn't till the early 1900s that it was considered feminine).

And here are some things to read if you wish to educate yourself.
http://freakonomics.com/2010/01/28/superfreakonomics-book-club-goldin-and-katz-on-the-male-female-wage-gap/
http://www.payscale.com/data-packages/gender-wage-gap
http://www.aauw.org/what-we-do/public-policy/aauw-issues/gender-pay-gap/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/christina-hoff-sommers/wage-gap_b_2073804.html

I want my children to live in a better world than the one that I grew up in and I don't see it happening today. [...] Candidly, I think the world is a more violent, aggressive and dangerous place to live in today than it has been in the past.

You realize this is a factual claim, not an opinion, right? Shouldn't you make a basic effort to know whether it's true or not before posting it?

Since you're talking about your own children, I'll assume you grew up in the 80s to early 90s. And since your comment focused on US culture, I'll use US crime rates since then to illustrate my point, which is that children today will grow up in a world about half as violent what you grew up with:
Violent crime, 1993-2012
Violent crime, 1973-2003
Homicide
Property crime (theft)
Even non-crime dangers are way down:
Fire deaths since 1918
Traffic deaths since 1900

Bear in mind that I'm not commenting on the rest of your post, just that one claim I quoted above. But if you care about truth more than truthiness, you should really change your tune about the violence and danger in today's (US) society.

Second, this system could be used in China sooner than here, and being tested by a large package delivery

Legalizing it doesn't make it practical. You obviously haven't been to China to realize that delivering to a Condo tower doesn't work and leaving a package out front would be stolen in a matter of seconds.
http://freakonomics.com/2013/02/12/whats-the-real-crime-rate-in-china/

Unfortunately, most states have a monopoly on lotteries. Otherwise, there would be many uses for lotteries. For example, savings can be encouraged with a lottery (prize-linked savings):

http://www.trendhunter.com/trends/lottery-savings-accounts

http://freakonomics.com/2012/04/26/lottery-loopholes-and-deadly-doctors-a-new-freakonomics-radio-podcast/

and 60+ years of pr0n research.

Would you care to point me to this research?

Seems like the opposite to me. They haven't proven that porn reduces incidents of sexual assault, but at a minimum increased societal access is empirically anti-correlated with the rate of sexual assault.

In what society?

and 60+ years of pr0n research.

Would you care to point me to this research?

Seems like the opposite to me. They haven't proven that porn reduces incidents of sexual assault, but at a minimum increased societal access is empirically anti-correlated with the rate of sexual assault.

You don't have to be a post-modernist to agree that all media (hell, everyon) is biased. However, I don't think it is fair to compare the bias of the Guardian with the bias of Fox News. There are degrees.

I happen to disagree. About the only way they could be more biased is if they had a love van in the back lot and were handing out fliers on Marxism. But let's be objective about this; Do you consider them to be more, less, or about as biased, as the New York Times?

If you answered the same or more, I have some bad news for you.

You simply cannot see your own biases. It's what I said originally. They're called cognitive blind spots for a reason. And this is one of yours. I'm sorry, but they're biased. They're about as biased as Fox News. You just think Fox News seems more biased because your own bias puts you left of center, which makes Fox News seem comparatively farther away than the NYT or the Guardian.

And you can't see yours:) From a US perspectively you may be right, but from a European one the Guardian is left-of-center to some extent while Fox is so far to the right it falls outside our mainstream left/right scale.

You don't have to be a post-modernist to agree that all media (hell, everyon) is biased. However, I don't think it is fair to compare the bias of the Guardian with the bias of Fox News. There are degrees.

I happen to disagree. About the only way they could be more biased is if they had a love van in the back lot and were handing out fliers on Marxism. But let's be objective about this; Do you consider them to be more, less, or about as biased, as the New York Times?

If you answered the same or more, I have some bad news for you.

You simply cannot see your own biases. It's what I said originally. They're called cognitive blind spots for a reason. And this is one of yours. I'm sorry, but they're biased. They're about as biased as Fox News. You just think Fox News seems more biased because your own bias puts you left of center, which makes Fox News seem comparatively farther away than the NYT or the Guardian.

Crime's like any other job: the high-paying, less risky jobs all require tons of skill and training, or family connections. If you haven't got a crime education or a crime pedigree, your only choices are super high-risk jobs like mugging or super low-paying jobs like corner drug sales.

http://freakonomics.com/books/freakonomics/chapter-excerpts/chapter-3/

While one doesn't lead to another, it doesn't surprise me when young kids who play GTA end up killing people with family members' guns while still young themselves. While almost no parents are perfect, plenty of parents are really, really, dreadfully awful. The parents who buy these games for young kids are often cut from the same fabric that leave loaded weapons laying around the house while unsupervised kids are running around.

And the parents who have a swimming pool at their house are generally more dangerous than those who have guns lying around.

When/if the hypothetical 3D-printing is used by both the fake and the real — producing indistinguishable pieces from the same designs — the clothing designer will stop being a profession and become a hobby.

Have you seen the fashion industry lately? (and by lately I mean for decades) It's entirely copy what's hot and make something as close to the original as possible. Nobody NEEDS the latest fashion, yet year after year it's a multi-billion dollar industry that's rife with product that is very hard to distinguish from the brand name stuff.

if some other way to reward designers is not found, they'll stop designing

They currently do NOT have any 'reward' for fashion designers. There is no IP protection in fashion. And yet they make very very good money - oh and they haven't stopped designing. It's a cut-throat business to be sure, but that just means the best rise and innovate faster than the market can keep up. Exactly how a free market is supposed to work.

Actually, not all of them...

http://freakonomics.com/books/freakonomics/chapter-excerpts/chapter-3/

Apologies, here is a link on the SuperFreakonomics chapter for those interested.

Try again.
http://www.freakonomics.com/2011/04/07/quotes-uncovered-how-lies-travel/

some of you people are crazy. spend lots of money to bypass some feature that costs less than the workaround

Lots of people will do things that are against their immediate economic interests to bring social pressures to bear on those who are behaving badly towards the community. It's called spite.

if we fail to attract the world's best and brightest

We need to attract them on a permanent basis to make any lasting improvements, not on temporary H1B's. An H1B employer can apply for a green card for its H1B employees, but if their primary motivation is their low cost, then that's not the route they'll chose to go.

(because they would often stick with paper-based solutions).

If they persist on such pigheadedness, their more nimble (and smarter) competitors will gradually put them out of business. These better companies will provide lower prices to consumers, better delivery, more efficient processes (which have positive environmental impacts) and will create more overall employment. This model has proven itself throughout every industry that didn't enjoy legal protection for the incumbents.

The US has a lot of un/un-employed STEM workers, each of which is already a drain on society if they're collecting government benefits. Getting those workers employed in native companies should be the primary goal; taking in foreign workers to make up any additional gaps above and beyond that makes total sense, but that's not the current situation (see a recent review of the numbers here).

Getting in your car, even sober, is the most dangerous thing you do each day.

Citation needed -- couldn't find a reference, but have seen a case worked up that showed household accidents causing more deaths than driving. Here's one case for driving drunk vs. walking drunk: http://www.freakonomics.com/2011/12/28/the-perils-of-drunk-walking/
Sorting out risk isn't easy or simple.

He never said that rounded corners were distinctive. He said that they were a part of a distinctive design, which gets at a fundamental principle of design patents that you seem to not understand. Design patents work by specifying a number of claims for a particular design, which are taken as a whole when determining if infringement occurred. There is no design patent just for rounded corners. Don't believe me? Prove me wrong. What you'll find is that rounded corners are always just one claim among many in the design patents in which they're mentioned, and so they are never considered in a vacuum when determining whether a product infringes on the design patent.

Challenge accepted: . Design Patent 504,889 -- which lists Steve Jobs and Apple design guru Jonathan Ive, among others, as the "inventors" -- is a claim for a rectangular electronic device with rounded corners. Thatâ(TM)s right, Apple is claiming control over rectangles. The full claim is only 2 lines long, and amazingly broad -- Apple is claiming all devices with the basic shape shown here.

I'm confident that my anecdote is representative. I refer you to the Stevens who are a lot better at economics than you or I are. Here are the choice quotes:

The best way I think an economist thinks about the value of education is tries to figure out how the market rewards it and what other benefits come with it. And one thing is clear is that the market puts a tremendous reward on education. So the best estimates that economists have are that each extra year of education that you get is worth about maybe an eight percent increment to your earnings each year for the rest of your life. So it turns out for most people buying a lot of education, or at least for the average person let me say, buying a lot of education is a really good deal.

I would say that returns are even higher now because of the recession. People aren’t thinking about it right. So they notice that somebody who graduates from college is having a bit of hard time getting a job, or they notice that the unemployment rate for college grads has gone up a little bit. But if you do the right counterfactual and say, “Well, what if I didn’t have a college degree,” it’s much worse. The rise in unemployment was much higher for people with just a high school diploma. As has always been true in every recession, the recession is always worse for less educated people.

Yawn. You are obviously either too stupid or too lazy to look up the numbers to know how valuable college is to the average educated person. I won't do it for you, but believe me the truth bears out my totally representative anecdote. Oh fuck it I'll do it not for you but for others who might not realize how fucking retarded you are: here it is, the truth.

I am a prick, by the way, a real asshole. But that doesn't change how right I am.

One interesting example I heard of is the fascinating Antanas Mockus, a Mathematician who became the mayor of Bogota. He had Unorthodox methods to say the least, but I found his creativity intriguing. My father once told me there was a political party in Israel once formed by scientists, but it went no where. You heard the one about two academics and a lightbulb right?

And then there are plenty of scientists out there consulting - this guy consulting the IMF with some potent ideas with heuristics for dealing with complex systems and tail events. I sure do hope they listen. Then again you will find ten other schmucks who are so called experts but give extremely harmful advice. And for all I know, Taleb's methods (as appealing as they seem to me) may fail under certain circumstances.

What I want to see is scientists forming financially and intellectually independent groups that aside from producing peer reviewed papers (or journals for that matter) would also work on projects (business, research, other). Asides from the ability to independently investigate and critique the government, it would be able to solve problems without government intervention. Not all solutions are costly and complicated, and the government is frequently large and inefficient. This might do some good to the economy, politics and science itself. In any case when things are small, failure is small. Things move quick. If something nice pops up it will pick up anyway, and centralized planning is often too sluggish to react. I am not saying Laissez-faire but a little consideration for the Subsidiarity principle in all our institutions would do society a lot of good.

And here I thought it was Roe v. Wade.

http://www.freakonomics.com/2005/05/15/abortion-and-crime-who-should-you-believe/

It's funny, they actually touched on Roe v. Wade in the article, perhaps you should read it. Did your lysdexia kick in or something?

And here I thought it was Roe v. Wade. http://www.freakonomics.com/2005/05/15/abortion-and-crime-who-should-you-believe/

http://www.freakonomics.com/2011/04/14/does-college-still-matter-and-other-freak-y-questions-answered-full-transcript/

Honest question: Do the misinformed leaders who advocate this in the US really represent a material segment of the population?

Do falacious people make leading questions?

Honest question: Do the misinformed leaders who advocate this in the US really represent a material segment of the population?

Were he, and hundreds of thousands other fully capable practitioners, able to come here and just hang out their shingle, you'd see health care costs plummet. But no. The medical profession protects its own from competition by convincing everyone they know best by limiting the number of doctors and med students.

A) Doctor salaries have decreased about 1% per year for quite some time, despite rising demand, leading to a government-created shortage.

B) Doctors aren't paid nearly what patients think, or even what patients think they deserve. Overall, it's an almost trivial portion of healthcare costs.

C) Foreign MDs vary a lot. Many are excellent, many are terrible. The thing is that the US has the strictest standards, so all are required to complete a US residency. Furthermore, the practice of medicine differs dramatically between countries. Foreign doctors generally need to improve on English, familiarize themselves with American culture (actually rather difficult for most), and learn about the diseases common in America (i.e. very different than China).

Long back I heard that in India there are people offering insurance against getting caught by ticket checker. The insured person pays money in advance and travels without ticket, and when caught pays fine and the amount is reimbursed.

While it may be in extremely bad taste this opens the door to some very grey areas.

After all, how can you measure how offended I am? sure people would appeal to things like "common sense" perhaps "civility" and "morals".
The problem only becomes apparent when people start to realize that , morals are made up and really what offends you will not necessarily offend me.

What I see as funny you may not agree with, to jail people over things which offend in my opinion borders on madness.

I wonder if this sort of nonsense is how they ultimately began public stoning, witch burning.

"Alas, you won’t see Hicks’s mirror on many cars any time soon. U.S. regulations require that driver’s side mirrors be flat, and this mirror is not flat. So if you want one, you will have to buy it and install it on the car yourself."

Question:

(In theUSA) Did the candidate who spent more than the other candidate on their election campaign ever lose the election?

It's a common misconception that spending more money will increase a candidate's chances of winning an election, but it's just that - a misconception. If you don't have enough money to get your message out, then yes, that can mean a loss, but it rarely comes into play.

Yes, there have been plenty of races where the candidate that spent more lost the election. In fact, most studies show that increased spending by an incumbent can actually negatively affect their chance of winning.

There is an interesting discussion regarding this misconception over on Freakonomics.

The Freakonomics guys, looked at that data and came to a different conclusion. They think that the side that's going to win spends the most money. It's a subtle difference but important. Their hypothesis is that the side that is going to win has an easier time raising money, and thus has more money to spend. It's an interesting possibility for the correlation between money spend and victory.

The most important result was that Steve Levitt found that if you double spending on an election (and everything else holds the same), you can expect to capture an additional 1% of the popular vote. If that's right, then you can buy an election, but it's very expensive unless you're already a contender.

Brand A fast food chicken products are, roughly as comestible as Brand B fast food chicken products.

Fortunately you can buy chicken offsets: http://www.freakonomics.com/2012/08/08/the-birth-of-the-%E2%80%9Cchicken-offset%E2%80%9D/

Personally, I don't get why this chicken restaurant is being targeted. It's owner said the exact same thing that Obama said for most of his life.

Obama changed his opinion a few months ago, but prior to that the gays were still very fond of Obama.

It's almost as though the media was manufacturing a fake crisis to distract us from more important things.

It means I also have a smaller environmental impact

That's actually up for debate. Transportation costs are only a small fraction of the environmental effect of agriculture, and spreading farming out into lots of smaller, less-efficient operations doesn't necessarily reduce transportation costs.

There's actually a lot of potential problems with the "buy local" movement... Freakanomics wrote an article about it last year, for instance.

That being said, if you PREFER local products (I think the Sausage at my local farmer's market is a lot closer to the sausage I grew up with than the stuff in Supermarkets, for instance), then by all means buy them. But don't do so because you assume what you're doing is somehow morally, ethically, fiscally, or environmentally better... In the grand scheme of things, chances are it's not.

At some point, the Club was mentioned. The professional thieves laughed and exchanged knowing glances. What we knew was that the Club is a hardened steel device that attaches to the steering wheel and the brake pedal to prevent steering and/or braking. What we found out was that a pro thief would carry a short piece of a hacksaw blade to cut through the plastic steering wheel in a couple seconds. They were then able to release The Club and use it to apply a huge amount of torque to the steering wheel and break the lock on the steering column (which most cars were already equipped with). The pro thieves actually sought out cars with The Club on them because they didn't want to carry a long pry bar that was too hard to conceal.

Sounds like BMW owners are going to make a run on Pep Boys to get "the club".

What Car Theives Think of the Club

At some point, the Club was mentioned. The professional thieves laughed and exchanged knowing glances. What we knew was that the?Club is a hardened steel device that attaches to the steering wheel and the brake pedal to prevent steering and/or braking. What we found out was that a pro thief would carry a short piece of a hacksaw blade to cut through the plastic steering wheel in a couple seconds. They were then able to release The Club and use it to apply a huge amount of torque to the steering wheel and break the lock on the steering column (which most cars were already equipped with). The pro thieves actually sought out cars with The Club on them because they didnâ(TM)t want to carry a long pry bar that was too hard to conceal.

Like crossword puzzles? What do you base your comment on?

Personally, I find their map correlates well with low effort thinkers: http://www.freakonomics.com/2012/04/09/the-thinking-liberal/

Exactly. One of the main reason for buying a Prius seems to be conspicuous conservation

.

Good point.

Seems like that might be a better form of consumerism from a societal point of view than one based on other symbols of status. Maybe we should encourage it?

Exactly. One of the main reason for buying a Prius seems to be conspicuous conservation

.

It's only bad if you make it bad. I really like the Freakonomics take on it: Fail quickly! Once you're certain something's not going to pan out, fail and move on! The Upside of Quitting

After seeing websites like "khan academy" it may be that textbooks are obsolete. Why keep reinventing the wheel if there are excellent individual lessons available for free online? Clearly the textbook market is turning into a scam because of the disconnect between buyers and sellers.

Perhaps entities accrediting teaching institutions should begin accrediting textbooks - formalizing the process of textbook selection instead of pushing this crucial decision to the lowest levels.

Another intriguing new system is the http://schoolofone.org/ pilot program in with multiple teaching modes- group lesson, online independant, online with tutor, etc. Lessons are customized for each student daily by an algorithm that measures progress, and adapts lesson mode based on how well each student does with a given subject and mode. Each lesson module is evaluated for it's effectiveness, and under performing modules are identified and updated. This freakonomics podcast discusses it http://www.freakonomics.com/2010/05/12/freakonomics-radio-how-is-a-bad-radio-station-like-the-public-school-system/

I understand that perspective. The trouble is the rights of a few people to run a business selling licenses for creative works simply does not trump the rights of them and EVERYONE else to basic things due process, and freedom of speech.

If the only way to police the Internet leaves online publishers (which includes anyone operating a site) with no recourse to defend themselves against improper claims prior to action being taken against them, there is a chilling effect. Its not an acceptable trade off. Frankly IP based business are just going to have to learn to live with a certain amount of crime, and come up with better solution technical and possibly legal to deal with it. Draconian clubs are not the answer though.

Think about this for an analogy. Shop keepers deal with breakins and vandalism all the time. Now I think everyone agrees that the media industry figures which put their losses at $250B ( http://www.freakonomics.com/2012/01/12/how-much-do-music-and-movie-piracy-really-hurt-the-u-s-economy/ ) the article further states that is like $800 for every man, woman and child in this nation. Clearly that is not reasonable. So the actual harm must be less, perhaps no so different from what the shop keepers experience. Now we could eliminate much of that physical property crime. All we would need to is impose a curfew and during the hours you are permitted out of your home have a guard on the corner of ever commercial district street demand your papers and you state your business for being there. The thing is nobody wants to live in that society. We don't want or need the Internet to work like that either.

Has anyone not heard this episode of Freakonomics http://www.freakonomics.com/2011/01/13/freakonomics-radio-the-economics-of-trash/?

I especially like Taiwan's approach described in the show. By having trash collection comes around at common hour and requiring people to take out their trash by themselves, it actually, to some level, SHAMES people into separating their trash because it is easy to spot by your neighbor if you don't have a recyclable bag. Nothing like peer/neighbor-pressure modifies behavior fast.

Besides, not a bad way for /.-er to come out of their basement and meet some chick

Our landfills are not in any way "filling up quickly" or "running out".

http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/the_green_lantern/2011/02/go_west_garbage_can.single.html :
"Analysts from the Environmental Protection Agency and the landfill industry assure us that, despite having fewer landfills, total capacity has increased. That is, landfills are getting bigger, on average, faster than their brethren have disappeared."

Where this myth started:
http://www.freakonomics.com/2011/01/13/freakonomics-radio-the-economics-of-trash/

Correlation does not imply causation. How can you prove that their surplus children (and the surplus children of their ancestors) are caused by their financial conditions rather than vice versa? It actually makes more sense that their financial conditions are due to their ancestors having too many children, limiting the families financial success. Since before modern farming techniques and the social safety net kept people alive, this group could have been effectively culled due to starvation or disease. This is no longer true.

As I understand it, in the poorest nations children are literally wealth. The families with more children face temporary privation until the children are able to start earning an income, then the additional income increases the family's wealth. So the more children they have the better off the family becomes. Given that relationship, it would seem that their poverty would have to be from the lack of children of their ancestors. However, as previously noted as the wealth of the country rises, the investment required to raise a productive child increases thus reducing the economic incentive to have children.

Looking at average population increase ignores the fact that people have varied strategies for continuing their bloodline. Some people will think about their quality of life, and realize that having kids won't improve it. These people will be weeded out in the genetic pool of future generations. But others won't, and now there is nothing stopping the offspring from a couple having eight kids all surviving until they are old enough to do the same.

Yet, the average number is what is important. If the average rate is declining then the overall rate is also declining. You are arguing that there is a demographic shift going on, but have yet to offer any evidence to support that.

A slight dip in the reproduction of the human species is not a trend I would rely on. Based on where we have come from, ie. the natural world, where whoever reproduces the most wins, and the fact that the game is now changed so that the more kids you have, the better chances of the survival of your genes, I can't believe that without some type of intervention, the number of human beings won't increase until there is absolutely no way the earth can support any more.

Never the less, analysis shows that as a country's affluence increases, it's fertility rate decreases. The trend has been steady for about 150 years. I'd say that after a 150 years it's more than a "slight dip".

Not that I put much store in such things, but studies and surveys show your statement is totally backwards--republicans (or, more specifically, conservatives) tend to be happier than democrats (liberals):

http://www.freakonomics.com/2008/04/23/conservatives-are-happier-than-liberals-discuss/

http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode.cfm?id=BABCDEA5-D180-499B-094168CBE5442468

On a purely anecdotal level, I would say that I would categorize more of my conservative friends as "happy people" than I would my liberal friends. There are of course dozens of exceptions, and, like I said, I don't put much store in this stuff anyway (especially non-scientific anecdotal).

They did this on an episode of Freakanomics. Seems like the financial incentive was found to be somewhat irrelevant overall.

http://www.freakonomics.com/2011/01/10/more-evidence-that-paying-for-grades-isnt-easy/

Bullshit. Ever actually changed out a production system? Or for that matter, ever rebuilt your home PC? You pull the every component in need of replacement at once. Replacing "one component at a time" when they are going to produce incompatible output does you no good at all.

Also, please stop being a dumbass. The plural of anecdote is not data.

Your commentary so far indicates a startling lack of common sense. Also, a serious problem of disconnection with reality, so please stop smoking crack.

Nice and civil. Oh well. Was fun while it lasted.

Bullshit. Ever actually changed out a production system? Or for that matter, ever rebuilt your home PC? You pull the every component in need of replacement at once. Replacing "one component at a time" when they are going to produce incompatible output does you no good at all.

Also, please stop being a dumbass. The plural of anecdote is not data.

Your commentary so far indicates a startling lack of common sense. Also, a serious problem of disconnection with reality, so please stop smoking crack.

It seems to me that the HFT industry and the wall street crooks who employ it are desperately trying to portray HFT as the sophisticated work of some extremely talented programmers who are just smart enough to help brokers earn more money, while in reality the whole system seems to be half inside trading (having access to information other traders don't know yet and methods other traders cannot employ) and half DoS attacks on regular traders (the same order will not work for them because HFT is preventing it). Therefore, it should (IMO) be illegal and perhaps such spin posts exist mostly to counter sensible attempts to ban it.

Disclaimer: I do not own or trade shares of public companies.