Freakonomics. Chunhgck Trees.

Levitt and Dubner turn their final sight's on the touchy areas of parenting and naming. The nature versus nurture argument is analyzed with a clear conclusion: Head Start programs dont work, special programs dont work, limited video game/TV activity does nothing...Essentially, nature is what wins out. Special parental attention plays a much smaller role than is popularly accepted. All data available show that heredity is a more influential factor than the aforementioned programs and parenting strategies. In the final chapter, Would a Roshanda by Any Other Name Smell as Sweet?, the two seek to answer the dilemma of whether or not a persons name will affect their future. Using the example of "Winner" and "Loser", they conclude that (on the basis that Loser was successful, while Winner was not) the name of a person does not play a role in ones success. However, they do make the conclusion that names are an indication of a persons ethnic, and financial background. In closing the book, Dubner and Levitt make one last stab at the parenting issue; they point to a wealthy white child, and a poor black child, both of whom went to Harvard. The poor black child went on to become an eminent economist, and the wealthy white child was Ted Kaczynski

Tone: Straight forward, blunt, scholarly

Rhetorical strategies:
Appeal to logic: statistical data on names divided by racial and socio-economic conditions.
Antithesis: Kaczynski versus economist...

Question;
Why would nature trump nurture?
Why am I unable to remember the name of the "economist"?

Freakonomics. Part Too.

Dubner and Levitt turn their unorthodox sights on drug dealing and crime. Using the statistical findings and records of Sudhir Venkatesh, Levitt reasons that drug dealing is similar to any business, and thus, hierarchical. Due to the hierarchy of gangs who peddle drugs, the demonized drug dealers are actually making very little money--the perks of drug dealing apparently involve a high chance of injury or death, and less than minimum wage earnings. Thus, the answer to the age old question "why do drug dealers live with their moms?" is relatively simple: they make less than the standard of a poor life--burger flippers. Levitt and Dubner make their more controversial claim in respect to crime and abortion. Using the example of Romania under Communism, they point to the increase in crime 16 years following an abortion ban as evidence that the prevention of abortion leads to higher crime. The flip side, that abortion eventually reduces crime, is demonstrated using statistical data in the United States. While "experts" laud the more mainstream reasons for lower crime rates (more prisons, more police, stricter laws), Levitt and Dubner one by one refute their infallible appearances.

Tone: straight-forward

Rhetorical:
1) Logical appeal. See: every page.
2) Statistics: used in discussion of drug trade, crime, and abortion.

Questions.....?
Why does conventional wisdom falter under such simple analysis?