At the Movies

Does Movie Violence Increase Violent Crime?

Apparently not. Because the potentially violent people are at the violent movies, rather than out on the street. And they aren’t drinking during that time, too.

Our estimates suggest that in the short run, violent movies deter almost 1,000 assaults on an average weekend. Although our design does not allow us to estimate long-run effects, we find no evidence of medium-run effects up to three weeks after initial exposure.

Dare I Say It? Dare, Dare!

Dare you even think the whole universe is just here for us?

An idea of the scale of numbers and what they mean, from a summary of a Neil deGrasse Tyson talk, reminiscent of the “powers of ten.” There’s a real kicker at the end.

50 billion: This is what Bill Gates was worth before the recession. To understand this, imagine you make a reasonably good living in the low six figures. With such an income you would be too busy to stop and bend over to pick up a dime, but you would stop for a quarter. By scaling this number up to Gates’ wealth, he would be too busy to bend over and pick up … $45,000.