Freakonomics

Freakonomics! A book that my friend Travis bought me for my birthday ( or was it xmas?) several years ago (maybe even back in the Galveston age). I picked it up again recently and started reading it. I assure you it had nothing to do with the declicious looking fruit on the cover. An apple (yum) with the innards of an orange (yum!). I can only imagine what a citrus apple would taste like (heaven!), but as for the book itself, I'm impressed. It reads like a casual lecture, relating cause, effect, and correlation.

I can understand why some introductory economic classes have it for required reading! Unlike the required reading for my Physical Anthropology class, Freakonomics is not a excruciatingly detailed decade long study on the various habits of the spectral tarsier and its environment. It doesn't have graphs, charts, or even a full-fledged explanation of what exactly doing a 'regression' entails. Instead it focused conveying more applicable generalized principles through magnetic good humor; what it does have is a light hearted, if slightly cynical, theories that try to reveal the flaws in conventional-moral thinking. Towards the end, it seemed like every time I opened the book, I was disappointed to find my bookmark so close to the back cover. That doesn't happen often!

More of an exercise of thought than a serious book on how economics works, I'd recommend it to friends as a very entertaining read. The theme of the book: if morality is how we want the world to work, then economics is how the world really works.

(in the above blog I meant no disrespect the the fine required book, The Spectral Tarsier, written by my esteemed Physical Anthropology professor, Dr. Gursky. I find myself riveted by the various graphs, charts, and the full-fledged explanation of all your extensive and thorough tarsier observation and experiment methodologies, data, and clearly entailed conclusions! Truly an impressive collection of information about the often misunderstood tarsier. It's impressive girth and tiny print prevents me experiencing that disappointment outlined above, where I find myself gazing regretfully when I find my wondering 'is the book really going to end already?)