Let me explain: Because we were early to the blogmeet, we stopped in to Big Hat Books, which is right next door to the Brew Pub. Big Hat is a neat little locally-owned book shop; the kind with pieces by local artists for sale and a friendly proprietress who is always eager to help. While there, I picked up a copy of Freakonomics
, which I had not yet read.I polished off whatever I was reading and started Freakonomics after my chores on Monday. Wednesday morning found me driving back to Big Hat for the sequel, SuperFreakonomics
. In hardback.Definitely interesting books. No matter your political orientation, there should be something in either one to piss you off and make you think.
I'm reading Levin's "Liberty and Tyranny" currently. I'm thinking and pissed off enough for the time being.
ReplyDeleteDid you see what I said about Chapter 6 on names!
ReplyDeleteI see it in action every day.
Shootin' Buddy
Orangejello.
ReplyDeleteHeaven forbid anyone with any political opinions actually look at FACTS or DATA as done in Freakonomics!
ReplyDeleteFascinating section about swimming pools and guns in there, by the way, if you haven't hit that point.
Read John Lott's Freedomnomics as well; he rebuts some of Levitt's anti-gun and anti-free-market conclusions.
ReplyDeleteLott was bent because they called him on his "Mary Roth" schtick.
ReplyDeleteFrankly, they were right when they said (as an aside) that CCW laws don't have much effect on crime rate: They don't. (Sure, toting a gun may save my individual butt, but the overall influence is small enough to get lost in the background noise. CCW is about rights, not statistics.) They also said that stricter gun laws don't have any real effect either, but some folks on my side seem to have skipped that part.
Lott made an ass of himself with his sock-puppetry and got called on it, and now he's all butthurt about it.
I agree with your assessment of Lott's person, but I didn't find that it affected the quality of some of the arguments and research in his book.
ReplyDelete