Wanderlust

Freakonomics

I recently wrapped up an interesting book called Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner. This is still on the NYT bestseller list. Levitt is a well known Economist who is a professor at the University of Chicago, considered to be the best school for Economics in the US. He created a stir when he published a paper stating that the drastic drop in crime in the '90s were a direct result of the legalization of Abortion by the U.S. Supreme Court (Roe vs. Wade) in 1973.

As the authors themselves state, the book really does not seem to have a "unifying theme". The various chapters start out by asking pointed qutestions such as "Where have all the criminals gone", "Why do crack dealers live with their moms", etc. Then Levitt (or rather Dubner quoting Levitt) goes on to explain after analyzing a set of data he presents succintly. The book is easy to read for the layman who does not understand much about Economics.

There is a lot of praise of Levitt in between chapters in the form of an excerpt of an article written by Dubner for the New York Times but this is tolerable because Levitt does indeed raises some thought provoking questions and his analysis makes you want to believe. He even has 2 chapters devoted to parenting where he puts forth the idea that the name that the parents choose for their children has a significant effect on the future of that child. He also dismisses the notion that parents have a huge influence in how their children turn out (in the conventional sense) and argues that peers have more influence.

For a trivia buff like me, this book is a God-send. I learned many details about how the real estate market works, sumo wrestling and the K.K.K. The book is about 200 pages long but is easy to read in a few hours. A highly recommended read.

Blog Addiction

The world is being taken over by blogs but most blogs (including this one) are quite boring to a majority of people. Especially if it's being written by one person with a biased view on things. Who cares really about my travels or my views on the latest blockbuster? The most successful blogs are either written by people who are extremely good (and funny in most cases) writers or are community blogs such as the Huffington Post where many people of (mostly) varied interest write what they feel.

So, after thinking about this for months, I decided to host a community blog for people I know. The goal is simple - invite people I know to blog about whatever topic under the Sun they want and make the interface simple enough for them. Most of my friends have not even heard about blogging or are not technically savvy. So, I had an uphill task. But after 3 weeks of running this site, I have had quite a few entries on my community blog. The site is called Rantlust (meaning a passion for ranting). I couldn't think of a better name. For now, it's hosted on a subdomain of my domain but if this takes off in say, 6 months or so, I will register a new domain and go with that.

One advantage of a community blog is that you are guaranteed at least some readership (the members themselves). In light of this, I have been blogging more on that site than my own site. Since my site is more about traveling entries, I will likely keep it that way and if I have to make my feelings about say, hiking or Maria Sharapova known, I will blog on the community blog. We shall see...