Bourree Lam looked at the humdrum of waiting in line:

• Americans spend about 37 billion hours waiting in line every year.
• Some have come up with ideas to get rid of queues. One involves allowing giving the last person first priority. Eventually those at the back of the queue would leave, killing the line.
• Most try alternate strategies. To make waiting in line bearable shops sometimes offer free Wi-Fi, or perhaps have impulse buys by the cashier so buyers can continue to shop as they wait.
• Some places want to encourage lines. Seeing a queue of patrons outside a restaurant, for example, can boost its reputation.
• Behavioural science has shown that waiting in line can actually make people value things more because it leads people to think that the wait was “worth it”.
• You could also always just pay somebody to wait in line for you. Though you may provoke revolt among your would-be queueing companions.

Read more about lines, why economists hate them, and why Chipotle has too many of them over here.

Source: The Atlantic

Bradley Berman took a look at technologies that could help prevent motor accidents with cyclists:

• Jaguar is using sensors embedded in the car to use lights, sounds, and a set of vibrations that feel like a tap on the shoulder to let a driver know if a bicycle is approaching.
• The company is also looking into making the door handle vibrate if somebody is about to open the door in the path of an oncoming cyclist.
• Volvo uses “Cyclist Detection” technology to automatically brake if a collision with a bicycle is imminent.
• Volvo is also experimenting with analyzing data from Strava, a popular bicycle app. If an accident is predicted then both the cyclist and driver are informed through a helmet flash and a heads up display warning.
• Ford is developing a custom sensor for bikes to analyze their pitch, yaw, and other performance statistics. It could then use this data to see where crashes most frequently take place and encourage cities to introduce bike lanes or speed limits in those areas.

Read more about the technologies you may soon see in your cars and bikes, and why they won’t be that expensive here.

Source: readwrite

The United States government is looking into purchasing a new set of Boeing 747-8s to serve as the President’s personal jet: Air Force One. Marcus Weisgerber looked into some of the iimportant factors that had to be considered before the decision:

• A new Presidential jet can only be bought by a President in their second term since the political uproar over a President buying a jet for themselves in their first term would be massive.
• Hence President Eisenhower bought planes that President Kennedy got to use, and the current Presidential planes were bought by President Reagan and first used by the first President Bush.
• The second President Bush tried to buy new planes in his second term but disagreements over what to purchase meant that the project was pushed back.
• Since a plane can only really be bought by a two-term President, it’s imperative that the government replaces the ageing planes now since it could be decades before another President gets two terms again.
• The government could have bought the smaller two engine 777 to be the President’s air-limousine, but the sheer size of the 747 makes a political statement and ensures that the American President’s plane stands out wherever they go
• The extra engines on the 747 can also help power all the bells and whistles that a Presidential plane get.
• These features include the ability to refuel mid-air, a walk-in refrigerator, and missile evasion capabilities.
• The decision to buy new planes seems to be driven by the fact that the current planes that serve as Air Force One are no longer in production, thus making it incredibly difficult to find spare parts.

The full article has many more details, talks about some of the other features that the future Air Force One will have, why there are disagreements over whether to get two or three planes, and why the even more massive Airbus A380 was never a contender. Read it here.

Source: Defense One

Franz Wild wrote about an app developed in South Africa to identify a potential mate’s “Lobola” –the gift that a man’s family offers a woman’s family in exchange for the woman’s hand in marriage, traditionally paid in cattle:

• The app takes into account the woman’s age, height, weight, waist, attractiveness, education, career, and marital history.
• It then calculates the number of cows that should be offered and can go onto convert that amount into dollars, pounds, and euros.
• The app has found that women in Lesotho and Swaziland have the highest average Lobola values with the typical woman being worth 12 cows.
• The lowest average value is in South Africa’s Northern Cape province with the typical woman being worth 5 cows.
• The app is meant to be playful, but some have suggested that it needs to take other factors into account such as cooking skills and alcohol intake.

Read about the developer who created the app, the exchange rate of cows to rand, and more over here.

Source: Bloomberg

Joe Pinsker wrote about the business of speculating on Super Bowl tickets:

• About two weeks before the Super Bowl, prices of tickets on the secondary market (through sites like StubHub) usually drop around $900.
• Thus for the past few years speculators have sold tickets that they didn’t own two weeks before the event when prices are at their peak.
• The speculators then bought tickets on the secondary market to fulfill their orders once prices began to drop.
• This year, however, prices dramatically shot up to more than double their normal level as the event drew closer.
• It’s unclear why – it’s possible that those who own tickets are colluding to reduce supply and drive up prices.
• Sites like StubHub, meanwhile, are making a killing since they make a 25% commission on each Super Bowl ticket sold.
• Estimates suggest that up to 15% of Super Bowl tickets are bought through StubHub so the company will have made tens of millions of dollars due to Super Bowl XLIX

See an excellent chart, and read more about the tactic of shorting and how it is best used over here.

Source: The Atlantic

Johnny Depp’s Mortdecai has flopped at the box office. Walt Hickey wrote that this wasn’t particularly surprising:

• Low turnout during the cold winter months and attention being drawn to the awards season mean that January and February are months with low movie turnout.
• This becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy since studios release all the films they expect to do badly in these months…further driving down attendance.
• But the first two months of the year aren’t the worst months for movies. Those released in September usually do the worst.
• This is because by the time September rolls around, a movie is too late to be a blockbuster, but too early to be Oscar bait.

See some fascinating visualizations showing how movies perform across different months, and read more details here.

Source: FiveThirtyEight

We’ve previously covered the use of body language analysis in international diplomacy. The Economist had an article providing more details about how it worked:

• Body language experts say that when somebody is hiding something, the way they smoke, check their watch, and even the distance they stand away from shop windows, change.
• Analysts also look for “micro-expressions” – things that last just 1/25^th of a second but reveal concealed emotions.
• Context is important. One expert notes that the body language of a suicide bomber is similar to that of somebody who may have left their stove on at home.
• The analysis can be painstaking. 30 minutes of video requires 20 hours of analysis.
• It is also expensive. The Pentagon spends $300,000 a year analyzing the body language of world leaders.
• When it works, it’s worth it. In 1979 one expert determined that Saddam Hussein’s body language indicated that he hated Iran more than Israel. Less than a year later the Iraqi leader invaded Iran.

Read other insights, how Putin’s body language has changed in recent times, and more over here.

Source: The Economist

AP wanted to make sure you know that Valentine’s Day is just around the corner:

• The San Francisco Zoo is suggesting that spurned lovers adopt some of the less popular creatures in the name of their former significant others.
• Suggested animals include the Madagascar hissing cockroach, and a Giant Hairy Scorpion.
• For $50 the zoo will send a certificate of adoption to the person whose name it was adopted in.
• The zoo notes that the scorpion, for example, grabs “doomed creature with its pinchers and stings the prey”, just like your ex.

Read more here.

Source: AP

Mona Chalabi looked into the average age difference within couples:

• Males are 2.3 years older than the female in the average heterosexual coupling.
• In 23% of couples the female is older than the male.
• While there are no official statistics, data from Facebook indicates that in homosexual relationships the average age difference increases as the couples get older.
• This is true of heterosexual relationships as well, although the effect is not as big.
• For example, for a couple who has an average age of 20, the average age gap is three years for homosexual relationships, and two for heterosexual ones.
• By the time the average age of a couple hits 50, the age gap averages around seven for homosexual couples and five for heterosexual ones.

See a chart showing the correlation, and read more details here.

Source: FiveThirtyEight

Back in the day the streets belonged to the people, writes Joseph Stromberg. Automakers then figured out a way to get pedestrians off the road and onto sidewalks in the United States:

• In the 1920s roads were places where pedestrians, push cart vendors, horses, and playing children jostled for space.
• It was the responsibility of everybody on the road – including cars – to make sure nobody got hurt.
• But as car use began to spread the number of deaths dramatically increased with the elderly and children frequent victims.
• There was a strong backlash against automobiles, made worse because people viewed them as frivolous play things for the rich – similar to how we see yachts today.
• People got organized and pushed for proposals to impose drastic speed limits on cars.
• The auto industry sprang into action, launching a counter-campaign to make roads the domain of automobiles.
• They were successful. Under new rules pedestrians could only be on the road when they were on a crosswalk.
• While there were new rules against jaywalking, they weren’t being enforced, so car makers launched a new campaign to shame people into following traffic laws.
• This included introducing the term “jay walking” – a jay back then was a term for a hick who didn’t know how to behave in the city.
• They also launched a wire service where journalists could send them details of car accidents, and the service would respond with a fully written article shifting the blame for the accident on the pedestrian.

The full article provides many more insights, has some excellent examples of the ads from the campaigns of the era. It also explains why automakers repeatedly hit a clown with a Model T. Read it here.

Source: Vox