Episode LXXI: A Slow Month
These last few weeks have been fairly unremarkable, except for the fact that we got our first snow on November 16 th , the earliest snow I can remember in my 3½ years here (don’t worry, it has warmed back up since then). While I’m waiting for something exciting to happen, here are a couple of recommendations: A Book About Everything If you are a fan of interesting things, then you should check out the book Freakonomics and its successor Superfreakonomics (the latter of which I just finished reading). Both books aim to use “economic” reasoning to look at all sorts of interesting and random behaviors, from sumo wrestling to realty to suicide bombing. What they are really doing is using science, and data, to look at the world in a different way. On the subject of fear, for instance: -Should you be more afraid of terrorism or suicide? The average American is 575 times more likely to die of suicide than of terrorism. -Should you be more afraid of guns or swimming pools? The aver...