In The Wall Street Journal Tom Downey calls Japan “the most culturally cosmopolitan country on earth.” In a wide-ranging article that looks at Japanese culture his description of examples of Japanese perfectionism stand out:

• Over two decades of recession have meant that pricey imports are beginning to dry up. This is allowing for Japanese culture to truly shine through on the streets of Tokyo.
• In Japan the norm is tiny restaurants that rely on personal interaction. The chef of one famous restaurant that has received three Michelin stars says that he bought the restaurant to cook, and personally tastes every dish that leaves his kitchen. He refuses to expand.
• One hotel watches for guests returning from a run, and when they do, dispatches a runner to give them a bottle of water and a hand towel.

To read more about fascinating examples of Japanese perfectionism, what bartending looks like in a country where 40% of the population can’t process alcohol, and why this may all end very soon making now the time to visit, click here.

Source: The Wall Street Journal

Via: Boston Globe

In a wide ranging article that looks at how companies are able to use data they collect on you to manipulate your spending habits, Charles Duhigg focuses on two companies in particular: Target and Procter & Gamble.

On Target he writes:

• Retailers are aware that shopping habits are incredibly difficult to influence. Once a shopper has decided to buy a particular product from a particular store they are likely to maintain that behaviour.
• There are particular times when shopping habits suddenly become flexible. Times such as graduation, marriage, divorce, and pregnancy can all cause a shopper to begin to form new habits.
• One of the initiatives that Target decided to focus on was to see if they could find out which of their customers were pregnant months before the baby was born. They found that pregnant females had particular spending habits that could easily be identified.
• They used this data to send targeted, individually customized offer booklets to the women in their database who were determined to be pregnant. It worked too well. One father found out that his high-school daughter was pregnant from the coupons he received.
• Target decided to subtly embed its offers in catalogues that marketed other products as well – even if their data showed that the customer was unlikely to buy that product. This misled the shoppers into believing that everybody received similar booklets with similar ads for maternity clothing and diapers, and made them feel more comfortable about shopping at Target.

On Procter & Gamble he notes:

• Procter & Gamble’s initial attempts at marketing Febreze, an odor eliminating product, initially failed, because those who are often in the presence of bad smells become habitualized to it and no longer sense it.
• Procter & Gamble shifted its marketing efforts to focus on becoming a regular part of your existing cleaning habits, rather than convincing you to adopt new habits entirely.

To read more about each of these case studies, the products you’re more likely to buy if you become pregnant, and how you can use information about your behaviours to achieve goals such as losing weight read the nine page report over here.

Source: The New York Times

Via: Life Inc.

In The Atlantic Adam Davidson tells about a joke told in cotton country: “a modern textile mill employs only a man and a dog. The man is there to feed the dog, and the dog is there to keep the man away from the machines.” Davidson explores the past, present, and potential future of manufacturing in America in a comprehensive article with individual stories that really bring to heart the experiences of industry workers in the United States today. Highlights include:

• Contrary to popular perception the United States is likely the #1 manufacturer in the world although China might have very recently relegated the US to #2. American output has risen by a third in the past decade.
• But those employed in manufacturing have steadily dropped, as computers have begun to take over. Between 1999-2009 the United States lost all the manufacturing jobs it had created in the previous 70 years.
• The United States is still a big producer of manufactured goods because it has a reliable source of highly skilled workers in an industry where measurements that are off by the width of a human hair can spell disaster.
• This has led to two tiers of manufacturing jobs in the United States. Those which require highly developed skills and are likely to remain over the coming decades. And then there are those which don’t require much skill but remain in the United States…for now.
• Low skilled jobs might remain in the United States for several reasons. The machinery required to replace humans might be more expensive than hiring employees. Usually if a machine is not cheaper than a human worker over a two year period, the human is preferred. Or the cost of outsourcing might be too high – difficulties involved with working with Chinese companies and their government mean that outsourcing doesn’t take place unless the savings are at least 40% or more – and they often are.
• The industry already operates on single digit margins and it is unlikely that they’ll be able to retain the low-skilled workers as technology continues to advance.

To read more about what this all means for America’s future, why it is important that machine operators don’t use their own judgment, and the long-lost-days that were known as the “Great Compression” click here.

Source: The AtIlantic

Via: Marginal Revolution, Econfuture

Apple’s share price now makes it more valuable than both Microsoft and Google combined. Yet Manjoo argues that there’s still plenty of room for it to rise:

• During Jobs’ tenure Apple’s shares rose by more than 350%
• However its revenues have grown even faster, so that the price to earnings ratio has declined.
• Apple’s P/E ratio is ~14. To put that in context Google has a P/E of 20 and Amazon’s is an amazing 139.
• Apple is not at its natural peak; rather it is at the cusp of a new era of growth. The iPhone may not dominate in smart-phone market share, but it does dominate smartphone profits, of which it commands 75%. The numbers in the tablet market are even more heavily skewed in Apple’s favour.
• Smartphones and tablets have just begun to become popular and as more and more people adapt to the new technologies, Apple is poised to grab a significant portion of the revenues.

To read more about Apple’s future, its opportunities, and the performance of its new CEO click here.

Source: Slate

MSNBC reports on a study conducted by researchers at the University of South California on the health consequences of being an investment banker:

• Over a decade incidences of insomnia, alcoholism, heart palpitations, eating disorders and violent tempers were observed within people in the industry.
• Working over 120 hours a week for four years causes creativity and judgment to suffer – important skills in the contemporary knowledge-based economy. What isn’t affected is technical accuracy.
• One banker points out that investment bankers often gain weight because they don’t have the time to exercise or sleep. On the flip side he notes that they don’t have to put their lives on the line.
• Contemporary economic problems are likely to create even more strain on the current generation of bankers.

To read more about the health effects as well as insider accounts and details of the study, click here.

Source: MSNBC

In The Believer Aaron Bobrow-Strain writes that during World War Two, one author argued: “The secret of Germany’s “husky soldiers” was its “excellent dark loaf”; the great resilience of Russia was its stubborn rye bread. France, on the other hand, a nation of puffy-white-bread eaters, had folded. What would become of the United States, where people simply would not eat whole wheat?” In a comprehensive article that looks at the history of bread Strain’s description of its industrialization stands out:

• Bread was one of the last forms of food to be industrialized. This is due to its organic, living, unpredictable nature during fermentation.
• Until the early 1950s bakers used the same methods to ferment dough as the Egyptians had done over a millennia ago. They mixed the ingredients together and waited for it to rise. Dough would sit around on the floor doing nothing but fermenting for hours, something that was anathema to modern industrial production lines.
• Then, one scientist found a way to separate the process of fermentation into its component parts. The new system cut down the amount of time required to bake by three hours and significantly reduced the amount of human labour necessary. This was achieved, in part, through the use of artificially created high-humidity environments that forced the bread to quickly ferment.
• In contrast, artisan bakers do whatever they can to slow down the process of fermentation, going so far as to refrigerate the mixture, believing that this allows the flavour to better develop.
• Since consumers started buying bread in markets rather than making it themselves at home, they needed a way to assess its freshness. They did so by squeezing it. Softer bread was perceived to be fresher and so chemical additives were added to bread to make it softer, although this came at the expense of taste.
• Today Mexico is the world’s most dynamic producer of white bread. This happened largely because during The Cold War the United States wanted to undermine the allure of communism through cheap and plentiful food, and so purchased the latest food industrial products for use by the Mexicans.

To read more of Strain’s fascinating analysis of bread, its history, and the role it has played in society, as well as to read why World War Two was crucial to our current relationship with bread, and why the supporters of traditional handmade bread were their own worst enemies, click here.

Source: The Believer

Via: Marginal Revolution

Catherine Rampell recently took a look at data released by PayScale and used it to comment on gender in the workplace:

• Women still only earn about 81% of men’s income for similar work.
• The gap between male and female pay is largest in the highest paying professions.
• The differences in pay also vary by the major that the individual studied.

Centives re-produced the data in an easily sortable format below: Read the rest of this entry →

As the United States heads into another Presidential election season, and the partisan rhetoric begins to rev up, Sanderson at the Chicago Tribune reminds everybody that the statistics and numbers that we’ll all soon be hearing can easily be manipulated. He points out that:

• In January 2011 Illinois increased the state’s income tax from 3% to 5% – a 2% increase. However it would be just as accurate to say that the increase from 3% to 5% was a 67% increase.
• A few years ago another headline pointed out that the social security benefits increase would be the smallest in 4 years. What wasn’t as widely reported was that social security benefits are tied to inflation and so the headline could just as easily have read that inflation was the smallest it had been in 4 years.
• If a company tells you that people who switched over to their services saved, on average $100, the numbers are likely inflated because the people who wouldn’t save money by switching wouldn’t have switched in the first place.

For many more fascinating examples like this, some of which show how you might be manipulated in your everyday life, read through Sanderson’s thoughtful and balanced post over here.

Source: The Chicago Tribune

Via: Freakonomics

Slate reports that on this day of romance and love up to 45 million pounds of chocolate will be given from men to women. But why did women come to be associated with chocolate? Slate took a look at the history of chocolate and gender:

• Studies analyzing whether or not women objectively enjoy chocolate more than men have been inconclusive. They have however suggested that American women enjoy chocolate more than women outside of America which would indicate that cultural factors are at play.
• Effective marketing is the most likely reason for the link between women and chocolate. Marketers do this by either suggesting that a woman’s life remains unfulfilled unless they are given chocolate, or they portray chocolate and sexuality as a transactional arrangement between men and women.
• Advertizers might have chosen to market chocolate in this way due to the increasing liberalization of women. Chocolate was a demonstration that women didn’t need a man to take care of them since chocolate fulfilled their every need. Unlike alcohol or sex chocolate is seen as a culturally appropriate thing for women to indulge in. Conversely, chocolate companies began selling men on the idea that sexuality could be bought with chocolate.
• There is a historical precedent for the relationship between chocolate and sex. The Aztecs believed that it enhanced the virility of men.

To read more about chocolate and women through the years; to find out why men drank coffee while women drank chocolate; and to see examples of advertizers linking chocolate with sexuality, click here.

Source: Slate