Paul Marks had the opportunity to interview Sheryl Connelly, a corporate futurist with Ford. Highlights include:

• Shelley does not consider herself to be a car person. Her job is to look at the world outside of cars, and to see how that will affect the car industry.
• Some trends Ford has identified include the rise in human population, creating increased traffic. This led to the development of Ford’s Traffic Jam Assist technology.
• Another trend is global ageing. As the average driver gets older, Ford needs to make cars easier to drive for the elderly.
• Ford is also working on further developing its Sync system – a way to keep your car connected in the mobile age.

To read more including the bets that she has to help engineers make, some of the techniques they use to develop cars, and other interesting details, click here.

Source: Slate

Ricardo Lopez reports on a farmer that found an innovative strategy to keep his farm profitable:

• America’s recent drought has destroyed a lot of corn crop, causing prices to rise.
• Corn is an important part of the diet of a cow. Farmers have struggled to fatten up their cows with corn prices so high.
• One farmer dealt with this problem by feeding his cows candy – knowing that they would quickly gain weight because of it.

Find out where the candy comes from in the full report here.

Source: LA Times

Via: Marginal Revolution

We’ve discussed this problem before, but being a billionaire is…hard. You have to decide what to do with all that money. You could try mining asteroids or just dress up as a rodent and fight crime. You can now add building replica cruise ships to the list. Duncan Kennedy reports that one Australian billionaire plans to build a replica of the Titanic:

• The planned launch date is 2016 and Titanics III and IV may follow.
• The ship will, like the original, have three classes, and those in third class will have the opportunity to share rooms and partake in Irish jigs.
• It will have replica lifeboats. (Although as a concession to its passengers it will also come equipped with modern lifeboats that can fit all of the passengers on the ship.)
• Other differences include air conditioning and internet, as well as a wider base to meet modern stability standards.
• Each room will have a wooden cabinet with a picture of the person who occupied the room on the original Titanic, as well as a short biography that tells you if the person lived or died.

Check out the full report over here, and find out how credible the plan really is.

Source: BBC

Advertisements for sex enhancement pills and creams that could enlarge various parts of our body come into our inboxes with surprising frequency. The family of one staffer even set up an intervention after they mistakenly left their email signed in on the family computer. Why do we have to deal with the daily annoyance of spam email? Alexis Madrigal reports:

• Spammers have revenues of up to $360 million.
• As long as 1 in 25,000 people respond to spam email, it is personally profitable for the spammer.
• Yet it costs society $18 billion every year to deal with all the spam email. This means that it costs society $50 for every $1 that a spammer makes.
• In contrast, stealing cars “only” costs society $30 for every $1 that the thief makes.

Read the full report that includes suggested techniques to reduce the amount of spam over here.

Source: The Atlantic

Via: Freakonomics

Why are superheroes so popular with websites like, say, this one? Tom Jacobs reports on a study that may answer the question:

• First participants were asked how strong an emotional connection they had with either Batman or Spiderman.
• Some were then shown a picture of that superhero looking muscular and strong.
• They then rated how they felt about their bodies. Those without a strong emotional connection to the superhero felt worse about their body, presumably because they compared their body to the idealized body of the superhero. Those who did have a strong connection, however, felt better about their body after seeing an image of the superhero, because it inspired them.
• The inspiration had concrete effects. In a strength task those who had a deep emotional connection with the heroes did better than those who didn’t.
• This might mean that superheroes are popular today because they help men deal with body image issues.

Find out more about the methodology of the study over here. You’ll also find out how this ties into other work on the issue, and what implications this has.

Source: Pacific Standard

Via: Marginal Revolution

For economists immigration laws and visa requirements are really just impediments to free trade. Workers should be able to supply their services wherever in the world there is demand for them, their nationality be damned. But what would the results be if this actually happened? Dylan Matthews reported on a couple of studies that tried to find the answer:

• Workers in developing countries could see their wages more than double to $19,272 – twice the American poverty line.
• In the short term the wages of those in rich countries would decline by 20%, but in the longer run things would even out as all the poor workers would now have the income to buy more goods.
• Such a move could also double the world’s GDP, increasing it by $65 trillion.

Matthews goes into much more detail about the studies here.

Source: The Washington Post

There is ample evidence that China is seeing an exodus of its super-rich. Why are they leaving? John Sudworth found out:

• There are fears that the communist government may change its pro-capitalist policies and decide to take money from the rich.
• Other countries also have cleaner air and better educational systems.
• China’s economic boom seems to be coming to an end, and moving to another country makes good business sense.
• All of this explains why 75% of EB-5 visas to the United States are granted to the Chinese. The EB-5 visa is a scheme that gives foreigners a green card if they substantially invest in the American economy in a way that creates at least 10 jobs.

Read the full report here.

Source: BBC

Media executives from channels such as Discovery and Disney are getting into the education business write Brooks Barnes and Amy Chozick:

• With the move towards digitization media companies are seeing an opportunity to build a new business, even as traditional textbook companies struggle to sell hardcopies.
• The total market is extremely lucrative, worth about $7 billion.
• Media company executives are doing to traditional makers of education material what others did to them: using computers and the internet to fundamentally alter the way that business is done.
• Disney is building a chain of language schools in China. The curriculum makes use of Disney characters and is expected to create an entire generation of Chinese youth that become buyers of Disney products and visitors to its planned theme park.
• The Discovery Channel believes that education is in their DNA. They were originally called the “Cable Education Network.”

To read more including the industry’s previous failed attempts to enter the education market, why Wall Street is skeptical, other initiatives by various divisions, the challenges faced by some of the companies, the role of politics, what Foxification means, and the effort to be relevant, click here.

Source: The New York Times

Via: Marginal Revolution