Business

Saturday November 14, 2009

A superfluous sequel

Review by ABBY WONG


Superfreakonomics
Authors: Steven D. Levitt & Stephen J. Dubner
Publisher: Allen Lane (an imprint of Penguin Books)

IN 2005, economist Steven D. Levitt and journalist Stephen J. Dubner showed their fellow economists how their curiosity about the world got paid off handsomely by writing a book that tiptoed on just about everything, Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything.

The book sold four million copies as of September 2009 and made the duo pop icons in the fields of economics and investigative journalism.

Their new offering, SuperFreakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes And Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance, proves that Levitt and Dubner still have the same zeal and sharp eyes for good stories.

But this time, they do so without passing muster with a lot of people – environmentalists, their fellow economists and last but not least, Al Gore, former US vice-president who won the Nobel Prize in 2007 for his efforts to bring world’s attention to the danger of global warming.

Like its predecessor, SuperFreakonomics is fascinating, provided you accept it as what it is and do not mind it being a hodgepodge of stories that have absolutely nothing to do with economics.

To millions of anticipating fans, all that needs to be said is that Superfreakonomics is more mind-boggling than its predecessor. It is studded with edgier topics gleaned from the corridors of academia to the dark alleys of prostitution, and between the underground oil reserves and stratosphere of our atmosphere.

If the stories are as interesting as science fiction, then the insights, or some of the remarks, made by people whom the authors interviewed sound like fantasy are not at all improbable.

Knowing the importance of giving readers a smidge of smut before loading them with heavier topics, Levitt and Dubner begin with the subject of prostitution in the opening chapter.

Though we as human beings are prurient by nature, this subject feels stale because the mysterious curiosity we have for this profession is pared down by the gobs of statistics data carefully outlined by the authors. The chapter, as a result, sounds like a research paper written by an undergraduate student.

The only spark of awe comes from the story of Alice, a successful businesswoman-turned-prostitute, by chance. Even that, the authors over-glamourise the story by dismissing any of the unpleasant sentiments that Alice may have in her new profession.

The rest of the other chapters deal mainly with the workings of human life with stories hashed together in a series of tangentially related vignettes. Thankfully, the writing is deft and seamless, making the stories entertaining and freaky to read.

For example, it turns out, according to statistics, that children of Muslim women who observe the one-month fast of Ramadan early in their pregnancy are more prone to certain cognitive disabilities as a result of malnourishment, and that less Indian women fall victims to domestic abuse after the introduction of televisions in India.

It is a pity, in this highly-anticipated sequel, for Levitt and Dubner to consistently choose to act as storytellers and data detectives, and refrain from giving their quirky anecdotes, the exact reason why millions of readers were charmed in Freakonomics.

The result that we get, hence, is a meandering on issues reading about which feels like one of those rousing conversations when topics tumble out so quickly that we get all hyped up, yet do not know for what reasons we are having the conversations.

The most interesting chapter has got to be the one on global warming. It is the story of Nathan Myhrvold, a scientist who thinks that global warming can be reversed by pumping sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere through an 18-meter-long hose pipe to replicate the cooling effects of volcano eruptions.

While Al Gore and the likes of him have got us all worked up about using less fuel and cutting down on carbon emission, it would be useful to also have people like Nathan Myhrvold and his group of scientists to come up with creative and cheaper solutions to save mother nature.

Unfortunately, their discussion was so boisterous that it sounds more like a bunch of rollicking college students talking about solutions to thorny issues with consequences of which they could not care less.

It is true that Levitt and Dubner have caused a ruckus among economists and environmentalists for their contrarian chapter on global warming, and that the discussions on some of the topics are circuitous.

Yet the outcomes are generally obvious. Superfreakonomics does shed light on aspects of these topics that many of us never considered, and which allow us to look at problems from different perspectives, to draw new conclusions and to perhaps think of new solutions.

Personally, I would not have stayed up late and read this book in four hours if it was not a page-turner. Nor would I have guffawed away at the humour and inspired by the authors’ wits and findings if they were absolutely absurd.

I read not with the cynical mind of a cold-blooded economist but with an open mind that embrace absurdity of human behavior and peculiarity of creative people. So should you. Only then will you concede simple solutions, sometimes, do fix life’s most intractable problems.

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