Slate Magazine was granted access to Rotten Tomatoes’ vast movie database and they found some interesting results about movies released since 1985. They include:

• The average actor has a Rotten Tomatoes score of 55% in his first film it then steadily drops to 50% for his fourth film and it stays there for the rest of his career
• Director’s first films are also given an average score of 55%. But instead of getting worse with time they seem to get better with experience. By the eight film a director’s rating jumps to 63% and after that it jumps again to stay between 80% and 90% from the twelfth film onwards.
• French actor Daniel Auteuil was the highest rated actor. John Ratzenberger, a voice actor frequently seen in Pixar films, is the highest rated American actor.
• Arsinée Khanjian was the best actress
• Chuck Norris and Jennifer Love Hewitt won worst actor and worst actress respectively
• Mike Leigh with a rating of 92.1% is the best director. Dennis Dugan was the worst
• Dakota Fanning was the most improved actress

The article has a lot more. Slate also has an interactive tool where you can compare the careers of any major actor or director since 1985.

Source: Slate

The Economist’s “Free Exchange” blog recently went to China and returned with a few impressions.

• The Chinese housing market seems to be doing okay. The government is overseeing a huge increase in supply but demand is also likely to significantly increase.
• A lot of Chinese labour is being absorbed by the service industry, leading to incredibly low rates of productivity. Free Exchange notes that some hotels appear to have as many staff as they do guests
• According to Free Exchange China’s short term outlook is exceedingly positive with the Chinese government having the resources to effectively manage any temporary crisis. The long term outlook is less clear with significant structural barriers in the economy and little political will to reform them.
• The Chinese government has a good reputation with the citizens and beliefs that the government would collapse in a democratic revolution in the face of an economic crisis may be misplaced.

There’s a lot of other interesting information including more details about the Chinese housing market and the status of Chinese entrepreneurship. Read the full post over here.

Source: Economist

A paper to be published by the American Economic Journal: Applied Economics has found that democratic professors are more egalitarian in their grading than Republican ones. The paper notes that:

“[T]he share of the lowest grades (F, D-, D, D+, and C-) out of the total is 6.2 percent in courses taught by Republican professors and only 4.0 percent in courses taught by Democratic professors; the share of the highest grade (A+) out the total is 8.0 percent in courses taught by Republican professors and only 3.5 percent in courses taught by Democratic professors. Both differences are highly statistically significant.”

Source: The New York Times

Via: Freakonomics Blog

Schumpeter at the Economist looked at the lessons that businesses can learn from Mother Theresa and Lady Gaga. Some of them include:

• Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu became Mother Teresa and Stefani Germanotta turned into Lady Gaga. The decision to pick up clear, easy to remember names hints at effective brand management.
• They utilized these brands to target a specific group of people. Mother Theresa engaged those who were “shunned by everyone” while Lady Gaga speaks to those who feel like outsiders from society.
• Both worked extremely hard. Mother Theresa rose before 5am every morning and Lady Gaga is constantly on tour.
• Mother Theresa and Lady Gaga also had a broader collective mission that gave structure to their followers.

The article goes on to talk about the effective communication techniques that helped propel them to success, as well as some drawbacks to their methods. Read it over here.

The people over at Freakonomics recently took a look at the Volvo XC60’s claims of being green. They were, to say the least, unimpressed. Read about it here.

Source: Freakonomics

It’s old news that the U.S. is suffering through a time of high unemployment, and records are starting to be broken. The average time of unemployment for those unemployed is now at an all time high – nearly 40 weeks. The problem with this is that the longer one is unemployed, the more difficult it is to become employed, thus the problems for these unemployed workers are compounded. This leads to the problem of unemployment benefits, which are running out for many people and leaving them in an even worse position.

Source: Economix Blog

Wired recently took a look at a fast growing emerging market: the market for human breast milk. It won’t be long before we’ll see breast milk-backed securities (remember, you heard it here first.) Some of the highlights from the article include:

• Breast milk can cost up to $2.50 an ounce
• Breast milk is the only bodily fluid not regulated by government authorities because it’s considered a food
• Less than half of all mothers breast feed their children for the recommended six months

The article has a lot more including the emerging battle between online sites that pay the mothers for their contributions, and corporations who would prefer that the mothers donate it for free instead.

Source: Wired Magazine

Via: Will Dearden

Leung Weiwen, an undergraduate at Singapore Management University found that there was a relationship between a country’s population, GDP per capita and how well the country did at chess. Some of the findings of the paper include:

• Armenia, Georgia and Moldova are the clearest outliers. Their players do a lot better than their population size or GDP per capita would suggest.
• South Korea, the Bahamas and Guyana do a lot worse than their population size or GDP per capita would suggest
• At best, population size and GDP can only explain about 40% of a country’s success at Chess

You can read the full paper over here.

Source: Chessbase

Via: Marginal Revolution

As it turns out it wasn’t just abstract ideals like democracy and human rights that benefitted from the recent revolutions in the Middle East. Arms Manufacturers are expecting a sales bonanza.

• The Middle East spent $111 billion on arms in 2010, with the bulk of the purchases coming from Saudi Arabia
• Somewhat surprisingly South America saw the largest increase in military spending in 2010
• India was the world’s largest arms importer in 2010
• The US accounts for 41% of the world’s military spending
• The US military budget has increased by 81% since 2001

You can read more about the state of the global arms market here.

Source: BBC News

Wired Magazine recently asked “Who Killed the Internet Auction?” the answer was more complicated than you’d think. It’s impossible to summarize the article in a few points, and you really do have to read it, but a couple of interesting facts:

• An Irish immigrant made popular a system of fixed prices rather than a haggle based shopping experience in the United States
• Auctions account for just 31% of all sales on eBay

The article also has an in depth analysis of the differences between the laissez faire techniques that eBay used when setting up its marketplace, and the more authoritarian management by Amazon of its third party retailers.

Source: Wired Magazine

Via: Will Dearden