Announcing the Winners of the SuperFreakonomics Paperback Giveaway
Yesterday, the paperback edition of SuperFreakonomics was published in the U.S. (only $10.54 at Amazon!). And we used a random-ish contest to give away five copies. If I had known there would be so many respondents — more than 600 as of this writing — I would have had the winning comments correspond to higher values! Anyway: thanks to all for playing, and congratulations to the winners, who are:
Michael Mehrotra: comment No. 9, which corresponds to the episode number of our “Power of Poop” podcast.
Paulius Ambrazevicius: comment No. 10, which corresponds to our publisher’s street address.
Wade P.: comment No. 22, which corresponds to Hungary’s suicide rate (per 100,000).
“Power Pooper” (do we sense a theme here?): comment No. 32, which corresponds to the jersey number of my favorite football player, Franco Harris.
Pat Long: comment No. 43, which corresponds to Steve Levitt‘s age (at least for another few days).
Note: we counted the order of original comments, not replies, so as not to skew results.
Also: this was fun. We should do it again sometime soon, yeah?
R.I.P. John Delaney, Prediction Market Entrepreneur
I’m saddened to learn that John Delaney died attempting to reach the summit of Everest. Readers of this blog will know John as the leader of my favorite prediction market, InTrade (and before that, TradeSports). John, or his data, and sometimes his stories, have long graced the pages of this blog, including this Q&A with Dubner. His colleagues know him as an energetic entrepreneur, always trying new things. I also know John as a friend and a collaborator, who was also willing to help crazy academics like myself run new prediction markets, crunch data his markets had generated, or debate what it all means, over a Guinness.
And as much as I knew John as a madcap Irishmen, and true sports fan, I never expected to hear of him drawing his last breath just meters short of the highest peak in the world. Press reports — which include the agonizing detail that John died without knowing his wife just gave birth to a baby girl – are available here and here.
Global Poverty Shifting Toward Middle Income, Failed States
A new report from The Brookings Institution examining global poverty rates since 2005 notes two primary trends: poor people are increasingly found in middle-income countries and in fragile states.
Brookings notes the obvious success of the one:
Over the past decade, the number of countries classified as low-income has fallen by two fifths, from 66 to 40, while the number of middle-income countries has ballooned to over 100. This means 26 poor countries have grown sufficiently rich to surpass the middle-income threshold. Among those countries that have recently made the leap into middle-income status are a group of countries – India, Nigeria and Pakistan – containing large populations of poor people. It is their “graduation” which has brought about the apparent shift in poverty from the low-income to middle-income country category.
And troubling failure of the other: Read More »
How I Self-Published a Book, And How You Can Too
I just self-published a book called How to Be the Luckiest Person Alive! I published it in paperback form, Kindle form, and free PDF (see directions below to get free PDF). The entire process took me three weeks. Using an established publisher would’ve taken over a year. [If you want Kindle version, click directly on kindle link above.]
I’ve written a prior post on my sales and advances on my first five books which were all published with major publishers. But I’m never going to publish in the morgue of the publishing industry again. This post today is about why I did it and how you can do it.
The book publishing industry is dead but they don’t know it. It’s like how the typewriter industry died. And the reason companies like Blockbuster and Borders can’t survive. And the entire music industry is dying. And broadcast television might be on the way. And the tablet industry is the first sign that companies like Dell might be in major trouble. And companies like Sirius mean the radio industry is dead. Read More »
and 
. If you haven’t seen it yet, the movie features Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner, and was made by a dream team of documentary directors. Paste Magazine named it one of the 