Centives

Allison Adato wrote about an exclusive club composed entirely of chefs who cook for Presidents and Kings around the world:

• Le Club des Chefs des Chefs only allows chefs who cook for heads of states into its ranks.
• During group meetings they engage in activities such as preparing an international meal that was served at a Harlem soup kitchen.
• They also exchange tips – salads and raw vegetables shouldn’t be served to Chinese guests.
• Other tidbits of advice include Hillary Clinton’s love for sweet potatoes and that Joe Biden “will eat anything”.
• The chefs have usually talked to one another outside of the club. It is customary for the chef of a head of state to call their counterpart if a foreign head of state is coming to visit, to find out if there are any allergies, preferences, or Halal requirements.
• Sometimes chefs are even schooled by foreign visitors. South Korea’s first lady got into the kitchen with one chef and helped cook to make sure the food was authentically Korean.

Read about the club, when it was founded, how chefs ensure that meals don’t repeat, and more over here.

Source: Roads & Kingdoms

Steve LeVine covered one of the quirkier aspects of oil company share prices:

• If an oil company discovers an oilfield and claims that it is “significant” its share price will rise 0.4%. “Major” oilfields cause share prices to rise 0.6% and “giant” finds send prices up 1.1% – almost three times as much as significant ones.
• Yet there is little correlation between the language used and the type of oilfield found.
• Perhaps the rise in share price is why companies have become increasingly boastful about their oil finds.
• Oil companies might also have become more boastful because they need to please their investors in a time when it has become increasingly expensive to explore new oil fields. “Giant” finds help justify the expense.

Read more about the study, see some graphs, and how recent the trend is over here.

Source: Quartz

Pity Italy’s (male and female) Casanovas writes Barbie Latza Nadeau. The times are changing:

• According to one survey Italians are the most unfaithful people in the world.
• Yet Italian austerity measures are making it increasingly difficult for Italians to have affairs.
• In the past wives and children would leave for the summers while husbands stayed at home ostensibly to ‘work’ allowing for a summer season of love.
• Now however women are working more in an attempt to repair family finances and so stay at work – and in their homes – for the summer.
• Government crackdowns on tax evasion make it harder to hide a weekend romantic getaway as a business expense.
• The reinstatement of the tax on second homes also makes it difficult to hold onto a love-nest.
• It’s not just the austerity – in an era of social media it’s harder to keep affairs secret anyway.
• Yet while it might be harder to hide affairs, being caught might not mean the end of a marriage. After all, who can afford to be single?

Read more about the changing ambience of Italy’s cafés, how Italians feel about this, and more over here.

Source: The Daily Beast

John Brownlee took a look at why the iconic Heinz ketchup bottle looks the way it does:

• Ketchup became popular in the late 1800s and at the time there was only two months in the tomato season. To make sure they could sell ketchup throughout the year, manufacturers filled it with deadly preservatives.
• In one study 90% of all ketchups were found to contain ingredients that could cause death.
• When Heinz figured out a way to make preservative-free ketchup year-round he put them in clear glass bottles so that the world could see how fresh it was.
• Heinz also brags about its 57 varieties – however this has never been true. When the label first appeared Heinz had over 60 varieties.
• Instead the number is simply a marketing ploy – a combination of Heinz’s favourite numbers that allowed him to brag about the breadth of his products.
• Today it serves as the point which consumers should tap to maximize the chances of getting ketchup flowing out of the bottle.

Read more about the history of ketchup, it’s fish oil origins, the vile state of ketchup in the 1800s, and the physics of ketchup over here.

Source: Fast Company

Perhaps telling us something about its readership, The Economist outlined exactly how people are able to purchase (illegal) drugs over the internet:

• Silk Road, a mail-order drug service allows anybody to purchase drugs online and have them delivered to their home.
• To access it users have to use a specialized browser that anonymizes individuals by encrypting and bouncing internet traffic around the world.
• Payment is made through Bitcoin – an anonymized currency that is difficult to track.
• Buyers have to enter their address – but it is deleted from the system once the seller reads it (à la snapchat).
• The seller doesn’t receive the money until the buyer confirms that they have received the drugs. Partial refunds are normally offered for missing packages.
• The substances are often sent inside gifts such as birthday cards or sweets.
• The buyer can then leave reviews for the seller.
• The Silk Road takes 10% on every transaction. Its revenues in 2012 were estimated to be $22m.

Read more about the dangers of using the service for wholesale purposes, those who have been caught, the danger of using Bitcoins and much more over here.

Source: The Economist

Helen Collis presented the CouchBunker:

• The CouchBunker is a sofa that doubles as a weapons store.
• The cushions on the bunkers are made of bullet-proof material and are fitted with straps so that they can be used as armour.
• The CouchBunker can store 30 rifles, weights 900 pounds, costs $6,700, and is lined with a two hour firewall.
• Its makers claim that it is also “a comfortable guest bed”
• Light weight versions can be purchased for boats and RVs

See some incredible pictures, how this crazed idea came into existence, and important points to consider before purchasing it over here.

Source: The Daily Mail

Via: Marginal Revolution

Cracked took a look at some of the more eccentric projects that billionaires are currently funding:

• Peter Thiel, the creator of PayPal, wants to build micro-nations in the oceans built on floating platforms that could move around to different parts of the ocean.
• Clive Palmer is looking to build an actual Jurassic Park. He doesn’t have the technology to clone real dinosaurs, but his park would have life sized animatronic replicas. Over 100 dinosaurs have been ordered.
• Dmitry Itskov thinks that by 2045 humans could be immortal by downloading brains into computers. The ultimate goal is to create holographic representations of our former selves.

Check out the full list over here.

Source: Cracked

Peter Reuell reported on a study that found that we watch music more than we listen to it:

• In a study participants were better able to identify the winners of a music competition by watching their performance with the audio on mute. Those who only listened to the audio – without any video – were not as successful in identifying winners.
• The effect held true even with top level performers being evaluated by judges who were highly trained musicians.
• This indicates that humans are innately more focused on visual rather than audio cues.
• The effect might also be because among top performers the difference in music quality is indistinguishable and thus judges focus on differentiating visual factors such as the performer’s passion and energy.

Read more about why orchestras have turned to blind auditions, why this might not be a solution, and more about the study over here.

Source: Harvard Gazette

James Surowiecki looked at the surprisingly complex economics of lobster:

• In 2005 lobster used to cost $6 a pound. Today it can go as low as $2.20 a pound.
• Yet in American restaurants lobster dishes are just as expensive as ever.
• This is partly due to the uncertainty of supply. If restaurants were to cut the price of lobster items, and then see the price of lobster spike, they would have a hard time raising prices again.
• When people can’t evaluate a product before purchasing it – such as in a restaurant – they often assume a positive correlation between price and quality. Thus if restaurants were to mark down the price of lobster, people might think that their lobster wasn’t very good.
• People also enjoy items that are more expensive if they’re associated with luxury – as lobster is. By reducing prices diners would enjoy their lobster less.
• Eateries may also want to keep the price of lobster high so that the rest of their menu items look cheap by comparison.
• Restaurants have found ways to serve cheaper lobster dishes without offending the image of lobster as a high class product. Lobster bisque, mac and cheese, and B.L.T. are not uncommon menu items these days.
• Ultimately lobster is not a commodity – it is now a luxury product – and so price has little to do with cost.

Read about the time when servants would demand that they not be fed lobster more than three times a week, how lobster came to be associated with luxury, and psychological experiments that show what’s up with the price of lobster over here.

Source: The New Yorker

Via: Kottke