The New York Times reports that passengers are coming up with creative techniques to avoid check baggage fees imposed by the airlines. They include:

• Travelling hundreds of miles to find airports serviced by Southwest Airlines or JetBlue – two airlines that don’t charge for the first checked bag.
• Others have taken up using airline branded credit cards which give them a host of perks but require high annual fees.
• An entire category of clothes with large pockets and plenty of storage room has become popular. Travelers are able to store a fair amount of things in clothing such as trench coats.
• Some passengers have resorted to vacuum sealing their packages – something that can significantly shrink the size of packages. They better hope that security doesn’t try to open them up though.

To read about some of the other techniques that passengers might use, as well as what Congress is doing to make things easier for passengers click here.

Source: The New York Times

Via: Cheap Talk

What would a world without Football look like? It’s not just idle speculation – it’s a very real possibility according to Tyler Cowen and Kevin Grier in an article they write for Grantland. Highlights include:

• Popular sports disappear all the time. Baseball, boxing and horse racing were the most popular sports less than a century ago. Now only baseball maintains the same kind of following.
• One scenario that leads to the end of football involves lawsuits over player injuries sustained during play. Insurance companies would refuse to insure players and coaches if this became a common phenomenon. Coaches and referees would become worried about potential liability issues and might choose not to be involved. Parents might withdraw their kids from the team. First the players would leave, then the viewers, and then, finally, the advertizers.
• While the direct economic impact is small – the NFL generates about $10 billion in revenue a year, compared to a national GDP of $15,300 billion – there will be several knock-on effects. Big stadiums would lose value as will industries such as accommodation and food preparation that rely on the audiences the stadiums draw. Since a lot of these stadiums are in rural America, urbanization might increase.
• Human capital would rise. Students would have less distracting them, and people who would’ve become players will turn into doctors and engineers instead. Schools would have to compete on academics rather than sports, causing educational levels to rise.

To see why basketball and football players from third world countries would benefit the most, as well as what sports will administrators do, and other interesting tidbits in a very well written and easily comprehensible article, click here.

Source: Grantland

Via: Marginal Revolution

Mike Mandel was asked to figure out how many jobs were available in today’s “App-Economy” his findings include:

• Official statistics from the government were unhelpful because the App Economy is dynamic and ever-evolving.
• Using his own measure, Mandel estimates that there are now over 450,000 App jobs in the United States. This started from 0 in 2007.
• Mandel argues that since the App Economy added a significant amount of jobs during a recession, it is likely that it is an industry that will boom even faster as the economy recovers.

To read more about what this could mean going into the future, as well as what governments could do to take advantage of this, click here.

Source: Mandel on Innovation and Growth

Via: The Economist

Justin Davidson at New York Magazine decided to find out what it took to become a musical conductor by taking a course at the Juilliard School. Some of the things he found:

• Conductors have to deal with the Maestro Paradox – the person responsible for the totality of sound produces none.
• What conductors have going in their favour is that the performers want to do a good job. One musician said that it was “amazing how beautifully we play when we don’t know what the hell the guy on the podium is doing”.
• The role of the conductor has evolved. They used to be seen as shepherds who were not above publicly berating and humiliating individual players who made mistakes. Now they’re seen as directors of a team of professional musicians.

To read more about what the limiting factor of the best conductors is (hint: it’s not their physical capacity) as well as a deeper description of Davidson’s experiences, click here.

Source: New York Magazine.

Tony Webber at The Age has a radical proposal: Heavier people should have to pay more for airline tickets. He notes that:

• The more a plan weighs, the more fuel it burns, and thus the more money the airline loses.
• Between 1926 and 2008 the average weight increases for men and women in Australia would lead to an extra 3.72 barrels of fuel for a long distance flight. This comes out to an extra $472 for the entire flight. This cost can add up quickly.
• If we assume that 75 kilograms is the ‘normal’ weight then somebody who weighed a 100 kilograms would have to pay an extra $14.50 whereas somebody who weighed just 50 kilograms would get a discount of $14.50

To read more about the proposal and why it makes sense, as well as other common examples of such (price) discrimination, click here.

Source: The Age

Via: Freakonomics

It’s commonly believed that there are more living people in the world right now than the total number of all the dead throughout history. The BBC reports that this is unlikely to be true:

• Analysts suggest that during the Middle Ages life expectancy might have been as little as 10, meaning that the majority of people didn’t make it past childhood.
• This is why humans might have needed a reproduction ate of 80 births per 1,000 people. Today it is only 23.
• This means that people were born and died at an astonishing rate just a few centuries ago.
• One analysis suggests that over 107 billion people have lived and died. Today the population of the earth is around 7 billion. This means that there are 15 dead people for every living one.

To find out when exactly the number of dead crossed seven billion as well as more information about the estimates click here.

Source: BBC

The New York Times recently took a look at foreign students in the United States and found that:

• Foreign students in the US contribute $21 billion a year to the national economy.
• The number of undergraduates form China went from 10,000 to 57,000 in just five years.
• This has raised questions about the accommodation of different languages and accents at university.

To read more about the surprising industry that has sprung up abroad to send students in the United States, as well as what this means for the future of tertiary education, click here.

Source: New York Times

Via: Marginal Revolution

The Atlantic recently took a look at an impending problem for America’s road network. They report:

• Since Eisenhower the federal government has had a Highway Trust Fund that is responsible for maintaining America’s road network. It raises fund through fuel taxes.
• However the fuel tax hasn’t risen since 1993 and so inflation has eaten away at its real value.
• Moreover Americans are driving less due to the economic recession further denting revenues for the fund.
• Finally the push towards more fuel efficient cars will also hurt Highway Trust Fund revenues since people will be consuming less fuel.
• Proposals for restoring the Highway Trust Fund to solvency include charging drivers based on the number of miles they drive to more accurately reflect the wear and tear they put on roads.

To read about other potential solutions as well as some real numbers about the fund and projections for when the fund will exhaust itself, click here.

Source: The Atlantic