Note de lectură: SuperFreakonomics

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On a per-mile basis, a drunk walker is eight times more likely to get killed that a drunk driver.

In a national health survey, 51% of Indian men said that wife-beating is justified under certain circumstances; more suprisingly, 54% of women agreed – if, for instance, a wife burns dinner or leave the house withtout permission.

According to the Indian Council of Medical Research, some 60% of Indian men have penises too small for the condoms manufactured to fit World Health Organisation specs.

Pe an, 5.8 oameni mor din cauza rechinilor, în timp ce elefanţii fac 200 de victime anual.

Female employees under 45 years old tended to miss work consistently on twenty-eight-day cycles. Plotting these absences against productivity ratings, the economists determined that this menstrual absenteism accounted for 14% of the difference between female and male earnings.

Most governments prefer to punish the people who are supplying the goods and services rather than people who are consuming them. But when you lock up a supplier, a sarcity is created that inevitably drives the prices higher and that entices more suppliers to enter the market.

What poses the greatest competition to a prostitute? Simply: any woman who is willing to have sex with a man for free.

Premarital sex emerged as a viable substitute for prostitution.
If prostitution were a typical industry, it might have hired lobbyists to fight against the encroachment of premarital sex.

Among U.S. teenages, oral sex is on the rise while sexual intercourse and pregnancy have fallen.

Prostituatele care apelează la peşti câştigă în medie mai bine şi au şanse mai mici de a fi arestate.
Un agent imobiliar şi un peşte performează acelaşi tip de muncă: marketing a product to potential customers.

A Chicago street prostitute is more likely to have sex with a cop than to be arrested by one.

The demand for prostitutes is far lower today than it way sixty years ago.

Over the first 15 years of their careers, women work fewer hours than men (52 vs. 58). Woman take more career interruptions than man.

Rather than interpreting women’s lower wages as a failure, perhaps it should be seen as a sign that a higher wage simply isn’t as meaningful an incentive for women as it is for men.

Terrorists tend to be drawn from well-educated, middle-class or high-income families. How can this be explained?

It may be that when you’re hungry, you’ve got better things to worry about than blowing yourself up. It may be that terrorist leaders place a nigh value on competence, since a terrorist attack requires more orchestration than a typical crime.
Terrorism is a fundamentally a political act. The kind of person most likely to become a terrorist is similar to the link of person most likely to… vote. Think of terrorism as civic passion on steriods.

The beauty of terrorism – if you’re a terrorist – is that you can succeed even by failing. Terrorism is effective because it imposes costs on everyone, not just its direct victims.

The probability that an average American will die in a given year from a terrorist attack is roughly 1 in 5 million; he is 575 time more likely to commit suicide.

În fiecare an mor pacienţi din cauza reţetelor indescrifrabile.
Ai mai multe şanse să mori dacă ai febră decât dacă te doare pieptul sau ai ameţeli.

Într-un an, un medic bun salvează cu 6-7 mai multe vieţi decât un medic slab.

Female doctors are slightly better than their male counterparts at keeping people alive.

Rata mortalităţii scade în zilele când medicii sunt în grevă.
When there are too many pshysician-patient interactions, the amplitude get turned up on everything.

Poor patients are much more likely to die than rich ones.

Savanţii care iau premiul Nobel trăiesc cu doi ani mai mult decât colegii lor mai puţin norocoşi.

Elderly Christians and Jews are more likely to die in the 30 days after their respective major holidays than in 30 days before.

Practicing to fight a war can be just about as dangerous as really fighting one. The accidental death rate for soldiers in the eraly 1980s was higher than the death rate by hostile fire for every year the US has been fighting in Afganistan and Iraq.
Sincer 1982, some 42.000 active U.S. military personnel have been killed – roughly the same number of Americans who die in traffic accidents in a single year.

The introduction of TV have a discernible effect on a given city’s crime rate.

An elderly parent in a retirement home is more likely to be visited by his grown chlildren if they are expected a sizable inheritance.

The U.S. citizens are easily the world’s leader in per-capita charitable contributions, but the U.S. tax code is among the most generous in allowing deductions for those contributions.

Sunt mulţi oameni care trec strada doar pentru a nu întâlni un cerşetor.

Behavior change is hard.

Seat belt reduce the risk of death by as much as 70 percent.

The world’s ruminants are responsible for about 50% more greenhouse than the entire transportation sector.

People are generally unwilling to spend a lot of money to avert a future problem, especially when it’s likelihood is so uncertain.

Fear of climate change satisfies our need for guilt and that eternal human sense that technological progress must be punished by the gods.

In some doses arrogance is healthy.

380 part CO2 per million, 1000 part is standard in buildings.

Even if humankind immediately stopped burning all fossil fuel, the existing Co2 would remain in the atmosphere for several generations.

Most pollution is a negative externality of our consumption.

The hospital personnel wash or desinfect their hands fewer than half the instances they should.

In the modern world, we tend to  believe that dangerous behaviors are best solved by education.

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