Perfect Parenting Part 2

The make-up of a name is what this chapter focus' on. Here Levit continues with his parenting ideas stating styles of names are predictors of future success and can be linked with certain groups of people. He also asks whether poor blacks tend to pick more obscure names or whether picking the names help to widen the gap between the rich and the poor. In this part he essentially questions whether or not naming your child a particularly black name will result in a lower economic status, or whether they are named according to their economic status. His research resulted in one large finding. According to Levit, applicants with caucasian names tended to get jobs more frequently than those who had generally african names. In general, he thinks that having a "black name" commonly results in acheiving lower in your lifetime.
I personally believe that this whole part is bullshit. I think that anyone could give their child any name and hes has just as good of a chance of being a success/failure as anyone else in the wolrd. However, i do believe that poor and broken-apart families tend to name their children with new or obscure names. There fore, many of the children who grow up and turn out bad in this group give obscure names a bad reputation.
The auhtor aslo analyzies how names become popular among the white communtity. In his analysis he found that well-off families tend to make odd names popular. Then, the name slowly makes it down the ladder until it reaches the lower class. I believe that this trend tends to be true. My mother works as a kindergarden teacher for a community with alot of high income families, therefore she sees many very interesting names get their introduction in her class room.

What makes a perfect parent??

This chapter deals with the author analyzing the different ways in which children grow up. Some of these include socioeconomic status and even race. Oddly enough, the author found that children growing up with a swimming pool were much more likely to die young. In fact he believes that swimming pools were 100 times more dangerous than a gun. Having swam since the age of two, i dont agree with his statistics. Swimming growing up had no negeative effect on me, in fact, it pushed me to become a lifeguard for my local pool.
The author also has several other odd trends which he claims to be true. First, he says his research shows that kids with "white" names are far more likely to be hired for a job. Although getting a job depends on many other variables other than just your name,i found this to be somewhat true. Most of the successful leaders of business have standard Amreican names. On the other hand alot of the people who work at convenience stores tend to have odd, unheard of names. Further more, the author found that names that are considered to be "black" are found in many low income jobs. To me this sounds like a partially true statement. Although there are many interesting names in the lower class, it has nothing to do with how you turn out in life. For example, if i named my future child a "black" name, this doesnt mean that he/she will not succeed in life.
IN general i thought that the authors opinions in this chapter were very stereotypical. Also, i believe that this chapter could have been fueled by the fact that the author himself lost a child due to illnes. He may simply be trying to justify the death of his child.

Chapter 4

The latest chapter in the book deals with the disappearance of criminals in the nineties. As usual, the other gives us a list of reasons why this might have occurred and analyzes all of the possibilities. Some of his conclusions are more suprising than i thought. For example, a few of the reasons that i believed would have led to a lowering crime rate had no connection with it. Stricter gun laws, the author claims, have nothing to do with this lowering crime rate. he refers to a court ruling that says all you can own a handgun if you have a criminal background. He points out that most criminals wouldn't buy guns from a store to begin with. According to him, the majority of felons in America rely on the underground black market gun trade for their firearms.

The author does make one significant link between abortion and crime. He believes that with abortion legal, crime rates will be severely lowered. Unwanted pregnancies result in unwanted children who are more likely to be abused and mistreated. MOre often than not, these neglected children turn into criminals due to their bad family relations and past. I believe this to be mostly true. The trends throughout history also prove this point. When abortion rates boomed in the seventies, the crime rates were lower in the nineties.

I found this chapter to be enjoyable but not the most interesting piece we've read. Also i didnt completely agree with some parts of his writing. For example, the author claims that the changes in the crack/cocaine market resulted in lower ammounts of crime. I dont understand how he can make that statement, since in the previous chapter he spent several pages describing the corrupt crime ridden life of a chicago crack dealer. But overall, i found this particular passage to be good and i agreed with the majority of it.

Why Do Crack Dealers Live with their Mothers??

So, why do crack dealers live with their mothers. Well according to the author its because the majority of them make little money. However, i was extremely surprised by the ammount of money that a gang leader could make. The statistics in the book show that on average "J.T." makes around 100,000 dollars a year by selling crack. Needless to say i was amazed. Lets not forget that every other lower ranking member of the gang makes less than minimum wage. But still, 100,000 dollars? There is quite a risk that goes with the title of drug dealer. There is a one in four chance that you can be killed while dealing drugs in Chicago. the author compares this to Americas most dangerous legal occupation, a lumberjack, who has only a 1 in a 100 chance of being killed every year. This whole drug section didn't necessarily completely amaze me though. After all crack is a known problem and through the media most of us have realized the large pay offs that some recieve for selling drugs (American Gangster for example).

The other part of this section that i found surprising was about conventional truths and the lies put forth by so called "experts". For example, the author states that one expert rallying for support against homelessness said that 45 homeless people die every second in America. Without looking to deeply into it, this fact is enough to make anyone want to support the cause. However, after analyzing the data the author reveals that if this were true then the amount of dead homeless would exceed the number of people in America after one year.

In short, i very much enjoyed this chapter. The book gives you a completely different perspective on many different scenarios. I can honestly say that there wasnt a second that i was reading that i wasnt interested. Great chapter.

I found the second chapter to be slightly less interesting than the first. The beginning of the chapter goes into detail about the origins of the Klu Klux Klan. He describes the hierarchy of the Klan, and how decisions are made. Klan activity is also discussed to a certain point. He then states that the Klan is an organization that derives its power from mass amounts of information. Real estate, he claims, also gets its power in the same way.
The Author continues to elaborate by describing how the real estate business skews and presents information to make buyers more interested. For example, the phrases that describe the condition of the house aren't what you think they may be. Often times phrases such as "good neighborhood" mean the opposite of what you think they would. In this case good neighborhood implies that "this house may not be nice, but the ones near it are". The author also shows how real estate agents often benefit from lowering the prices of the houses that they are selling.
the authors random analysis continues with the analysis of players that appear on the weakest link. For example, minorities such as Mexicans are typical looked at as being poor and are usually eliminated in the first round. In short, the author continues in this chapter by linking and analyzing two random topics and explaining how they are similar to one another. The real estate-Klan link was in my opinion the most interesting from the selection. I also agree with the author that both of these professions are driven by mass amounts of information. In short, this was another good chapter, but i didn't enjoy it as much as i did the first chapter.I found that first chapter was much easier to relate to.

Freakonomics Chapter 1

After reading the first chapter in Freakonomics its by far the most interesting thing we've read so far. Some of the comparisons and analysis are so abstract that i believe its almost impossible for the readers attention to wander. The first chapter is all about incentives. How much does it take for someone to cheat? well according to this author everyone has there own price. the most interesting part to me was in the first section regarding the daycare. After applying a late fee for parents who failed to pick up there students, the amount of kids picked up late increased! At first i wasnt sure about the validity of this statement but after the explanation it became clear. By applying a fee, parents no longer felt the moral pain associated with pickign up yor child late. Instead, the fee told them "its okay to pick up your children late, as long as you pay the fee. Later the fee was taken away and the number of late parents increased even more. The daycare had now taken away most incentives for picking up your child at the correct time.

The later part of the chapter talks about sports and cheating, why wouldnt sumo wrestlers cheat if it benefited them? Well i dont believe they do cheat, but some of them just have less or more incentives to win which in turn would alter their will to succeed in a match. All in all i found this chapter to be very interessting. the way the authors presents issues and asks questions make you think twice about what you would do. For example, at the end of the chapter the author asks "could any man resist cheating if he new he wouldnt get caught". Not only is this hard to determine personally, but it makes me wonder who in the world would or would not cheat. Would famous leaders cheat to gain popularity?? Overall i really enjoyed this weeks reading.

Newest Reading

During this week’s reading the author urges the reader to reconsider the concept of gender. The passage suggests that gender is more of a personal decision. Cultural decisions such as wardrobe and other basic actions are some items that determine each person’s “gender”. Stereotypes are also a large part of making gender decisions. For example, man are usually pictured as “rough and tough” while women are portrayed by “dainty and nurturing”. However, in today’s society most people would agree that man and women posses each of these qualities. The text argues that each person can construct their own definition of gender. This can be done by creating your life with a mixture of traits from males and females.
The book also gives an overview of what helps to define gender in today’s society. Stereotypes, cultural norms, and location were some of the most prevalent. I thought that location was the most interesting of all of these factors. After I thought about it, I became quite a bit clearer. For example, where I live there is little difference in the way different men or women act. On the other hand, large cities tend to have a greater variety of people and no solid definition of “gender”. The book also confronts the topic of feminism. It says that both men and women should support feminism. I also believe that the author gives away some of their personal beliefs during this part.
Overall this passage helped to open my mind to views I had not looked at before. The location example was the one that I found to be most interesting, and true. In general, I don’t agree with the author when he states that people create their own gender. Although men and women may decide to change their personal look/actions the definition of gender still stays the same.