Freakonomics makes the case that good parenting doesn’t necessarily produce good children. But what’s the effect of bad parenting — especially child abuse?

Martin Amis offered some evidence on that subject in a talk at the New Yorker Festival this weekend, in the form of a “charming anecdote about Stalin.”

In 1937, Stalin liquidated most of his census board for reporting an undesirably low population for the Soviet Union. Afterwards, he visited his mother, whom he hadn’t seen in years.

“What are you now?” she asked.

“Remember the Tsar?” he asked. She did. “Well, I’m something like that.” Read more …

The following story is currently making the rounds on the Internet. The events probably didn’t happen exactly as described, but for my purposes it doesn’t really matter.

Supposedly, a woman posted the following personal ad on Craigslist:

What am I doing wrong?

Okay, I’m tired of beating around the bush. I’m a beautiful (spectacularly beautiful) 25-year-old girl. I’m articulate and classy. I’m not from New York. I’m looking to get married to a guy who makes at least [a] half a million a year. I know how that sounds, but keep in mind that a million a year is middle class in New York City, so I don’t think I’m overreaching at all.

Are there any guys who make 500K or more on this board? Any wives? Could you send me some tips? I dated a businessman who makes average around 200 - 250K. But that’s where I seem to hit a roadblock. Read more …

I first met Liz Seymour some 20 years ago. She lived then in the same house where she now lives, in Greensboro, N.C. She was (and still is) roughly ten years older than me, a Smith grad with a bohemian streak who wrote freelance articles for national magazines and newspapers, often about the home furnishings industry that had a strong presence in the N.C. piedmont.

I never fell completely out of touch with her — it’s a long story, for another time perhaps — but it wasn’t until her daughter Isabel came to New York as a Columbia student that I really got reconnected. That’s because Isabel had made an interesting lifestyle choice: she had become an anarchist. I first became aware of this when Isabel was arrested for her role in “disrupting” the 2000 Republican National Convention in Philadelphia. Isabel was about 19 or 20 at the time. She wrote her family a heartfelt essay, her version of “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” explaining why she had come to dislike and/or distrust government and capitalism in particular. It was a very compelling letter, eschewing anger for explanation, wide-eyed but hardly naive. It was so compelling, in fact, that Isabel won an unlikely convert to her anarchist cause: her own mom, Liz.

At the time, I was researching a book on the psychology of money. Read more …

Is the U.S. “war on cancer” focusing on the wrong things?

Britain studies the economic impact of higher education.

Chinese-made Cub Scout badges recalled for lead. (HT: Consumerist)

Identity data: the newest hot commodity for businesses. (Earlier)