Why a Kind of Pretty Woman Is Like a Santa in a Shop, and Other Very Nerdy Facts ; Book of the Week
Linked as:
Summary
SUPERFREAKONOMICS: GLOBAL COOLING, PATRIOTIC PROSTITUTES & WHY SUICIDE BOMBERS SHOULD BUY LIFE INSURANCE BY STEVEN D. LEVITT AND & STEPHEN J. DUBNER (Allen Lane Pounds 20) HOW is a street prostitute like a department-store Santa?' ask the authors of SuperFreakonomics in one of their chapter headings. Hard to know where to begin, isn't it? Is it the long string of bleak and loveless transactional encounters? The empty mockery of intimacy? The need to pretend -- 'Ho ho ho,' so to speak -- that you enjoy it? The constant fear of violence? The high likelihood of alcohol and drug dependency? No, it turns out that street prostitutes are like department-store Santas because 'they both take advantage of short-term job opportunities brought about by holiday spikes in demand'.
Demand for prostitutes in America goes up around July 4, as demand for Santas does around Christmas: prices go up and talented amateurs take it up and cash in.See the full content of this document
Extract
Why a Kind of Pretty Woman Is Like a Santa in a Shop, and Other Very Nerdy Facts ; Book of the Week
Not so eye-opening as you'd have hoped, is it? You might equally well ask why prostitutes resemble scab postal workers. The point of similarity holds up -- it just doesn't really illustrate anything fundamental about prostitution or the Christmas post.
Why should suicide bombers buy life insurance? Because among the variables in algorithms used by the se...See the full content of this document
Sponsored links
