malaise_monk

The most interesting thing I learned from Freakonomics was the structure of drug-dealing enterprises.I think you understate the strength of the connection Levitt found between abortion and crime. Not only did crime drop when the aborted embryos/fetuses would have become teen criminals, but only the number of criminals in the expected age bracket dropped. The crime rate caused by older criminals wasn't significantly affected. He also looked at data from states that had legalized abortion before Roe v. Wade, and found a similar, earlier correlation in those states. Wikipedia has a decent art

This one's fun:There's an evil queen with a plan to execute 50 prisoners. She gathers them together and announces the plan:The prisoners will line up, all facing one direction so the one in back can see the other 49, and the one at the front can see no one. Starting at the back, each prisoner will be given a white or black hat at random (there could be 50 black hats, 50 white hats, or 25 of each). Each prisoner will be able to see the hats of the prisoners in front of him, but not his own hat or the hats of those behind him.After they all have hats, the queen will start at the back (with th