What happens to all that fan mail that celebrities get? Jon Kelly found out:

• Some such as Robert Pattinson of Twilight fame try to read it. Others such as Ringo Starr destroy it. Most outsource the reading of it.
• A company that has represented Johnny Depp, Rob Lowe and Michael J. Fox in the past currently represents 26 celebrities and goes through 20,000 items of mail a month.
• Television actors generate more mails than movie stars – possibly because we watch them in our living rooms rather than a theater, making them more accessible.
• Candy that is sent gets thrown out. It might be drugged.
• Other gifts such as soft toys are distributed to local hospitals.
• The letters themselves get shredded and recycled.

Read more about how various celebrities deal with their fan mail, what fans get in return for the effort of sending a letter, and what the letters generally say over here.

And, of course, you can also send us fan mail by reaching out to us at any of the links on the bottom here =)

Source: BBC

We’ve previously covered how being the American ambassador to Austria costs just $1.3 million. Nicholas Kralev looked at the pros and cons of this practice:

• Wealthy donors who are appointed to ambassadorships around the world generally have a close working relationship with the President.
• Having no experience in foreign policy before they can also bring innovation to the post and challenge traditional kinds of thinking.
• They normally have extensive management and leadership experience. They may also be wealthy enough to fund glamorous parties and receptions.
• Yet in the end these are inexperienced individuals responsible for helping conduct America’s foreign policy – no different than, say, a General.
• Often inexperienced appointees won’t speak the language of the country they’re assigned too and might even have their own personal agenda to promote in the country.
• The State Department oversees two weeks of training for new ambassadors. After that they’re mostly on their own.

Read more thoughts about the practice, some examples of the inexperienced appointees that have been successful, and some of the abject disasters over here.

Source: The Atlantic

Spring break is more than just a week long holiday. It has become an entire industry writes Allie Conti:

• Sites like StudentCity offer spring break packages that include up to 12 hours a day of free drinking in exotic locales with famous DJs.
• Some of these packages cost more than a semester’s worth of tuition.
• While the internet has heralded the end of most travel agencies, the spring break travel industry has thrived.
• This might be in part because students are spending their parents’ money – not their own. The upper-middle class kids might also not know how to deal with unstructured free time – needing the organization of travel packages to schedule their vacation.
• The companies for their part keep staff on-site to refer intoxicated partyers to local officials.

Read more about the embodiment of spring break who runs one of the companies, other companies in the market, and why the companies hope to avoid attracting GDIs over here.

Source: Vice

Behind all those beheadings you hear about in Saudi Arabia, there are people trained in the art of cutting off people’s heads writes J. Dana Stuster. Their future is looking bleak:

• Saudi Arabia is considering updating its laws to allow execution by firing squad.
• Swordsmen aren’t threatened because of a lack of demand. Indeed, the execution business in Saudi Arabia is booming. Rather, the problem is on the supply side. There aren’t enough reliable swordsmen.
• The government is having trouble recruiting more swordsmen because few people are interested in beheadings for a career.
• Overall Saudi Arabia’s current generation of swordsmen aren’t overly concerned. One has already received firearms training in preparation for the rule change.

Meet a Saudi Arabian executioner, his apprentice, and read about the religious barriers to allowing firing squads over here.

Source: Foreign Policy

Companies spend millions advertising their brands and products on search engines such as Google and Bing. Research from eBay suggests that the money is wasted:

• In an experiment eBay turned off its paid search listings across a third of the United States.
• It found no appreciable drop in revenue. For the most part those who were going to search for a product on eBay were going to find eBay regardless of whether or not they saw an ad for it.
• Overall the research concludes that for every dollar spent on search engine ads, anywhere between zero and 25 cents of revenues is generated.
• The researchers note that paid search listings might be useful for less well-known companies.

Read more about the study, its caveats, and its methodology over here.

Source: Slate

The rise of online shopping means that malls have to change writes Tom Bill. Here’s what they’ll look like:

• People prefer to buy things on the internet. To keep people coming through its doors malls must become more like community centers.
• This means that the malls of the future will have medical and government services as well as art galleries and spa centers.
• There might also be inspiration from other countries: malls in China and Dubai have experimented with having residential spaces or open leisure areas to draw people in.
• The websites of malls will also change. They will include services such as the ability to book a parking space or a restaurant table.

Read more about why logistics is the new retail, the lack of vision by shopping center owners, and the countries where developers are taking a lead to evolve the concept of the mall over here.

Source: Reuters

We’ve previously covered the lengths that people go to, to make it onto best-seller lists. Now Patrick Wensink writes that it’s probably not worth the effort:

• Wensink made just $12,000 after having the book that was number six on the list of best-selling books in America.
• This is despite the book being ahead of the Hunger Games on the list – and not far behind 50 Shades of Grey.
• It made it that far up the list by selling 4,000 copies.
• The disappointing amount is likely why most well-known authors continue to be professors at university.

Read more about the amount that other authors have made, what Wensink did with the money and more over here.

Source: Salon

Carnival Cruise Lines has been in the news for all the wrong reasons recently. Yet it’s stayed in business thanks to the generous help of the US government writes Gwynn Guilford:

• The US Coast Guard has spent millions of dollars on rescue operations for stranded passengers on Carnival Cruise Lines.
• Yet as a company incorporated in Panama (despite having its headquarters in Miami) Carnival doesn’t have to pay any US corporate income tax – meaning it gets the services of the US Coast Guard for free.
• By being incorporated outside the US it’s also able to avoid all the regulation and safety requirements that would probably help prevent such disasters.
• Despite the accidents travelers appear to have a short memory. Bookings recovered three weeks after the most recent incident, likely helped along by generous promotions.

Read more about the Senator trying to take action against Carnival Cruise Lines, a response from a company spokesperson, and a breakdown of what Carnival has cost the US coast guard over here.

Source: Quartz

Marcus Wohlsen writes about a school that doesn’t charge you…until you get paid. Highlights include:

• App Academy offers a 9 week 810 hour course that teaches students how to become expert programmers.
• The classes are free. If graduates of the course get employed then they pay 15% of what they earn in the first year of their job.
• This puts the onus on the instructors to give a high quality learning experience – since they won’t get paid if the students don’t.
• The biggest risk to App Academy is students who join without any real intention of finding a job. To prevent this App Academy requires students to sign a good-faith agreement and pay a $3,000 refundable deposit.
• Admission is competitive. Less than 10% of applicants are accepted.

To read how much money graduates can expect to make, why this is fairly lucrative for the academy, and the types of people who have signed up click here.

Source: Wired

Via: Marginal Revolution

Note: several commentators have pointed out that we’ve failed to make a distinction between a free service and free software. They are correct. We apologize for the confusion.

Google has announced that it’s about to retire Google Reader despite the fact that millions rely on the service. Farhad Manjoo points out that this goes to show why we shouldn’t trust free software:

• The nature of software has changed. Before you would purchase software and you could use it indefinitely. Even now programs decades old can be installed on our computers. Now with software stored on the cloud, if the company decides to shut down the service, there is nothing users can do.
• Free stuff is especially susceptible to this threat. If a company thinks that its software isn’t worth your money then it probably doesn’t think much of the software.
• Similarly, if you do use a free service often, and there’s an option to pay for it, then you should. It might just save the service.
• Google, however, doesn’t really allow you to pay for its service. And that’s likely why a lot of its products will eventually be discontinued. On the chopping block are both Google Voice and Google Scholar among others.

Read more about the future of RSS, some Google products that’ll probably stick around for a bit, and why Orkut will soon die even in Brazil, over here.

Source: Slate

Note: several commentators have pointed out that we’ve failed to make a distinction between a free service and free software. They are correct. We apologize for the confusion.