SuperFreakanomics- A Review.

I was happy to discover this week that the sequel to Freakanomics came out this past week. On the whole it was probably a bit worse than the first book, although it was filled with interesting facts. It was only 220 pages, which I felt was little short, but who knows?

The first chapter is about women, and their place in the modern world I guess. The section is devoted to an explanation of prostitution in American and how it has evolved in this century. Also examined is the salary difference between the genders. Overall it was ok I guess.

The second chapter talks about death. Learn about a guy making ER'S more efficient. Apparently Chemo barely works for certain types of cancer, but is still given for no reason . Terrorists should buy life insurance to hide that they are in fact going to soon kill themselves.

The third chapter deals with apathy and altruism. It turns out that most people are selfish, and will only help others if there is proper incentive (a theme that runs throughout the book). Asks whether one should be able to sell their own organs to help make up the deficit of people who need them. It sounds despicable morally, but I wonder if one could make the case that it's one own body, and therefore should be able to sell their kidner for a monetary gain. If you put a sticker eyes next to a coffee station at work that says please pay, more people will.

Chapter 4 is about how cheap things can solve a lot of problems. One learns about the man who discovered washing your hands saves lives, and how most doctors today still don't do it. The cheap seat belt saved thousands of lives. Car seats apparently don't do anything.

Chapter 5 is about global warming. The authors reason it is better to try cheap schemes with little chance of success, to combat global warming, then it does to spend trillions of dollars on a plan, which still may not work. Quotes the idea of shooting sulfur into the atmosphere (pretty sure that was in the Economist a few months ago).

Prologue- An experiment was done on monkeys to see if they could understand the concept of money. They then realized if they paid the female monkeys, the monkey would then have sex with him.

Cool things I learned.
1) A cow expels 25 times more greenhouse gas then a car. So next time a Vegetarian tells you you're ruining the environment, tell them that you're saving the world from the cow menace.
2)People will act towards seemingly well thought out plans in strange ways. Example: Charge people by the pound for garbage, then they'll use less waste. Instead people threw their trash in the woods, flushed it down the toilet, etc...
3)Most importantly, sometimes the small simple solution is better than the large wasteful one.

UFC 104

UFC 104 was better than expected, due to Shogun not sucking as most people though he would.
Some thoughts:
1)Anthony Johnson looked really good, although him not being able to make weight by 6 pounds is somewhat concerning. If he moves up to middleweight his size advantage might disappear, so if he can cut to 170 he should probably do that.
2)Joe Stevenson looked decent in his win. His striking was better, but he used his main strength (taking people down), to win the fight. Spencer Fisher needs to work on his take down defense, although he did stuff Stevenson a few times.
3)Gleison Tibau showed he has good take downs but nothing else. Neer showed in his last fight he doesn't have a great guard, yet Tibau was unable to do anything. Neer looks to have solid everything else, except stopping people from bringing him down.
4)Cain Velasquez looks like the real deal, except Mazzagatti shouldn't have stopped the fight when he did. You could tell he was just looking for a flurry of punches and then he was going to call the fight. Couldn't really tell anything from Rothwell.
5)Great main event, although Shogun clearly won. I had it 49-46, maybe 49-47, but I have no clue how Machida was given 3 rounds. Kevin Iole wrote a really dumb article saying don't blame the judges, blame Shogun's corner men for telling him he was winning. That makes little sense, objectively Shogun won the fight. How can you blame his corner men from telling him the truth. Iole is basically saying, "well he should have just knocked him out, then he would have won." Idiot.
6)Don't know how Barry-Hardonk got fight of the night...