cause & effect & 2 awesome books

everyone has gone home and walking to the suzuki night market(at queen vic market) tonight with grace, kendrick & melody made me realise that most of the asians are GONE
like there are actually the same number of caucasians and asian along swanston street.

wow
once a year migration
i wonder if this has any effect on anything

like in freakonomics
awesome book. i wonder if they'll have a degree in that kind of stuff. it basically applies economics to... non boring stuff like drugs and the klu klux klan. my favourite chapter is in superfreakonomics (the sequel) and its the epilogue about monkeys behaving like humans when they introduced the concept of MONEY to them (scroll down to read)

anyway, the main point of the effect thingy is illustrated in this story.

EFFECT: One of the states of USA was predicting a even higher rise in crime rate, everyone was fearing for their lives. but suddenly, the crime rates fell to super super safe. and everyone was wondering why.

CAUSE: Awhile back, all the states of USA were petitioning for legal abortion. illegal was super expensive, so only rich and middle class people were able to do it. and they succeeded in making it legal.

apparently, all the people who were supposed to commit crime (research shows that being from a poor, unstable home makes someone more likely to commit crime) were being aborted. so all those poor people were having legal, cheap abortions & those feotuses that were gotten rid of were the ones that was supposed to commit crime!

anyway, so the lack of asians in melbourne. what effect does that have? i wonder....


THE MONKEY STORY
so they put fake coins out on a tray to the monkeys one at a time in a seperate cage and the monkeys would have to exchange the coins for treats (jello or a piece of fruit) and one random day, a monkey tossed the tray back to the rest of the monkeys in the main cage and ran after the coins [bank robbery!]

and the researchers tried to get back the coins. but the monkeys wouldn't give up the coins unless the researchers gave them the treats in exchange for the coins [crime pays!].

so while giving the treats in exchange for the coins, the head researcher noticed a male monkey giving a coin to a female monkey. the researcher thought that the male monkey was showing kindness to the female monkey... instead. BAM. the first recorded instance of monkey prostitution. and 8 seconds later, the female monkey came up to the researcher to buy jello.

COOL RIGHT COOL RIGHT!!! sadly the experiment didn't continue cause the researchers thought that money was destroying their social interaction and their group. i would love to get my hands on that group of monkeys and see what happens. i reckon in 10 years time you would have prostitution, crime, abortions, bribery and a mafia in that monkey group