My Favorites from 2008

(1) Favorite Book - "Three Cups of Tea," chronicling the story of Greg Mortensen, an American mountaineer who, through a series of incredible events, took up the cause of building schools in Northwestern Pakistan and Afganistan, is a great way to close out the year. Mortensen's work (upwards of 70 projects in the region) in education, public health and skill building has probably done more (per dollar or per unit effort) to fight the likely root causes of terrorism - poverty and extremely high opportunity costs to obtaining education and skills - than anything else in recent memory.

A good story to remind us how to go about "going about" next year (and subsequent ones, as well).

(2) Favorite Film - A good hard look at crime, terrorism, civil liberties and how far "good" can go before crossing the line, along with some ridiculously sharp acting by Christian Bale, Heath Ledger and Aaron Eckhart, compels me to put "The Dark Knight" at the top of my film list. Just because the Academy is too stodgy to give "popcorn flicks" Best Picture nominations doesn't mean that this phenomenal movie shouldn't get a nod. (Other favorites: "The Visitor," "Wall-E," "Slumdog Millionaire," and "Milk").

(By the way, "Least Favorite Trailer of 2008" goes to the one for the forthcoming Meryl Streep film "Doubt." Not only was it bizarre the first time around, I've been exposed to it before every movie I've seen in the last six months. Do they ever plan on releasing this film, or is the strategy to just keep showing the preview over and over for some extended period of time?)

(3) Favorite Academic Discourse - Is happiness contagious? James Fowler and Nicholas Christakis argue that it is: you will be happier if you have happier friends, or if your friends have friends who have happy friends. Fowler and Christakis have also argued in the past that obesity and smoking are contagious, as well.

In the same issue of the BMJ containing the happiness piece, Ethan Cohen-Cole and Jason Fletcher (the latter of Yale University) argue that Fowler and Christakis' methodology to examine peer or social-network effects is faulty in that they do not fully control for the common environment shared by all the individuals in the network (after all, you and your friends may be happy because all of you were exposed to a city-wide balloon race or something like this). Using the Fowler-Christakis setup, they are able to show that things that shouldn't be contagious - acne, height and headaches - appear to be susceptible to peer effects just like happiness. When fully controlling for the common environment, these spurious causal effects disappear. (Yup, "Favorite Falsification Test of 2008").

Guess which piece got all the press attention. Justin Wolfers at Freakonomics has a good commentary on the discourse and the manner in which it was reported.

(4) Favorite Post - I really had a good time writing this one.

(5) Favorite Historic Moment - That Obama guy winning.

And, finally, best wishes for the New Year! I'll see you in 2009.