By Steven D. Levitt, Stephen J. Dubner

The New York Times best-selling Freakonomics was once a global sensation, promoting over 4 million copies in thirty-five languages and altering the way in which we glance on the global. Now, Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner go back with SuperFreakonomics, and fanatics and newbies alike will locate that the freakquel is even bolder, funnier, and extra magnificent than the first.

Four years within the making, SuperFreakonomics asks not just the harsh questions, however the unforeseen ones: What's extra harmful, using inebriated or strolling under the influence of alcohol? Why is chemotherapy prescribed so usually if it's so useless? Can a intercourse switch enhance your salary?

SuperFreakonomics demanding situations the way in which we predict yet again, exploring the hidden part of every thing with such questions as:

* How is a highway prostitute like a department-store Santa?
* Why are medical professionals so undesirable at washing their hands?
* How a lot strong do motor vehicle seats do?
* What's tips on how to seize a terrorist?
* Did television reason an increase in crime?
* What do hurricanes, center assaults, and road deaths have in common?
* Are humans hard-wired for altruism or selfishness?
* Can consuming kangaroo shop the planet?
* Which provides extra price: a pimp or a Realtor?

Levitt and Dubner combine shrewdpermanent pondering and nice storytelling like not anyone else, even if investigating an answer to international warming or explaining why the cost of oral intercourse has fallen so greatly. via analyzing how humans reply to incentives, they exhibit the realm for what it truly is – reliable, undesirable, grotesque, and, within the base line, tremendous freaky.

Freakonomics has been imitated again and again over – yet purely now, with SuperFreakonomics, has it met its match.

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Additional info for Super Freakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes, and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance

Example text

Del quehacer funcional, penetra la categoría de la secuela no deseada. Según dicha teoría, existen riesgos globales (su construcción social y política) y, por tanto, varias (definiciones de) crisis ecológicas, que producen nuevos desórdenes y turbulencias mundiales. En quinto lugar, en las investigaciones que se realizan en el ámbito de la teoría cultural es preceptivo sustituir el concepto de linealidad y la disyuntiva <(o esto o eso», que subyacen a la axiomática nacional-estatal, por afirmaciones ilativas del típo <: globalización y regionalízación, vinculación y fragmentación, centralización y deseen- 64 65 tralización son, según esco úlcimo, dinámicas que se miran y corresponden como las dos caras de una moneda.

Ttca de la utilízación imperialista de los recursos naturales. ,p ropio terruñ o» se convierte en este sentid o en la reivindicación simultánea del derecho a disfrutar de unos recursos natura les y de la sobera nía nacional. ional de la sociedad global. Con todo, conviene subrayar la smgularidad de la politización involuntaria de todo~ loscam~os de la actividad social como resultado de los confhctos de nesgo . Los peligros percibidos abren a la decisión social unos automacismos al parecer comp letam ente bloqueados.

Este único sistema mundial, que privilegia los marcos referenciales para las desigualdades sociales a escala mundial, se lleva a cabo, según Wallerstein, a través del capitalismo. En su opinión, el capitalismo es, dada su propia lógica interna, necesariamente global. Surgida en la Europa del siglo XVI, la dinámica capitalista abarca y transforma radicalmente cada vez nuevos «continemeSJ>, espacios, rincones de la vida social tradicionales. » 8 Según Wallerstein, la economía mundial capitalista comporta tres elementos básicos: En primer lugar, consta--dicho figuradamente-de un solo marco, el cual está regido por el principio de la maximi~ zación de los beneficios.

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