Reminds me of a quote from 'Freakonomics' [1]: "After a New York livery-cab driver named Michael Goldberg was shot in early 2004, it was reported that Mr. Goldberg was in fact an Indian-born Sikh who thought it advantageous to take a Jewish name upon immigrating to New York. Goldberg's decision might have puzzled some people in show business circles, where it is a time-honored tradition to change Jewish names."

[1] http://www.amazon.com/Freakonomics-Economist-Explores-Hidden...

This is part of Freakonomics (http://www.amazon.com/Freakonomics-Economist-Explores-Hidden...). Though you could have obviously seen it elsewhere.

In the book, it was referring to lottery based admission to the better schools. The result was that it didn't matter whether the students won the lottery or not. They performed equally well (on whatever generic criteria you use to judge academic performance in hs, most likely state standardized tests). The point being that students who cared enough to want to be in the better school would do well no matter where they were.

Really interesting piece, good stuff. New York's funny for me, because I did all my working, living, and visiting of NYC only in the last five years. I'm old enough to remember hearing of New York as a dirty, dangerous place, but I never experienced any of that outside of movies like Coming to America. I talk with older relatives about spending time in Harlem, in Queens, in the Meatpacking District, and they're like, "New York?! Be careful!" And my reaction was, "...umm, it's one of the safest cities in America." People don't believe it.

IIRC, Freakonomics had a chapter talking about the reduced crime in New York. It's been a few years since I read it, but I think Friedman's conclusion was that the reduction in crime had less to do with the broken windows policy and more to do with the fact that NY tripled their uniformed officers in that timeframe. Uniformed officers walking around an area is one of the largest deterrents of crime anywhere. Some good stuff in that book, anyone who liked this piece would do well to check it out.

Steven Levitt's blog:

http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/

Freakonomics, no affiliate link:

http://www.amazon.com/Freakonomics-Economist-Explores-Hidden...