Centives

22 scrappy contenders are going to be involved in a no-holds, anything-goes brawl to try to breathe some life into a dying industry by convincing movie-goers to visit the theaters writes Ben Fritz. We look forward to seeing the movie adaption:

• Compared to the previous four summers, this summer 50% more big-budget movie productions are going to be released.
• The supply is surging despite the fact that American box-office receipts have been down 12%.
• Ten of the 22 aren’t sequels, spinoffs or reboots – and these types of movies generally do worse at the box office.
• Certain movies are going to directly compete with one another. In the animated category Despicable Me 2 will go up against Monster’s University, while The Hangover Part III will compete with Fast and Furious for the ‘young men’ segment of the market.
• The battle begins with the release of Iron Man 3 this week. Other upcoming movies include Man of Steel, Star Trek, World War Z, Pacific Rim, and The Lone Ranger.

Read more about the importance of ‘hold’ in the industry, the movies that will be premiering in the same week, and what studio executives have to say over here.

Source: The Wall Street Journal

David Alexander looked at the numbers behind Guantanamo Bay:

• The prison costs $150 million a year to operate – or $900,000 per prisoner.
• That means that every prisoner at Guantanamo costs 30 times more than the $30,000 that the average American prisoner costs.
• The high cost is due in part to the prison’s remote location. Everything has to be flown in including judges and the media during trials.
• Until recently administrators didn’t even reveal how much the prison cost. One expert suggests that in eleven years of operation the prison has cost up to $2 billion.
• Unless the prison is closed soon it will get a whole lot more expensive. Urgent investments of $170 million are needed to upgrade the living facilities of American troops overseeing the prisoners.

Read more about the political context of Guantanamo, what the money could be used for, why neither of the political parties are in favour of it, and more over here.

Source: Reuters

The Economist looked at how the private sector is helping public schools offer healthier meals in the United States:

• In the public school system meals are usually made in a process similar to airline food. It is manufactured in a large center, then frozen, packaged, and shipped across the country.
• Little wonder then that many children choose not to eat the free lunches and either go hungry or resort to junk food.
• Revolution Foods is trying to change that by using locally sourced ingredients. Children are also asked for their feedback on the meals that are produced and this ultimately leads to food that is healthy and which children actually like to eat.
• Revolution Foods also receives daily reports on what is and isn’t being eaten and uses it to either update its menu or convince students to try new things.

Read more about the challenges that Revolution Foods faces and the problem with school lunches over here.

Source: The Economist

Wondering which country you should invest your money it in? Mull it over lunch writes Adam Pasick. It’s more useful than you’d think:

• According to the list of best restaurants in the world Europe is stagnant – Danish and UK restaurants both dropped in the rankings.
• Asia and Latin America are rising – Mexico, Thailand, and Peru are some of the emerging markets that are rapidly rising in the list.
• The United States has an uncertain outlook – it has the most restaurants on the list, but they’re losing ground.
• Japan is showing nascent signs of growth – both restaurants inched up the list.
• The list of best restaurants doesn’t completely track the economy. Belgium’s and Italy’s restaurants are doing well, though their economies aren’t. India, Turkey, and Canada aren’t on the list at all.
• The best restaurants cater to elite customers – and as the developing world grows and gives rise to a new elite expect restaurants to pop up to serve their dining needs.

See which countries have the most restaurants in the list, how the list of best restaurants compares to the list of billionaires by country, and read more about the trends over here.

Source: Quartz

There is currently a conspiracy theory that the Obama administration is attempting to buy up the USA’s ammunition supplies. Which is exactly what we want, writes Matthew Yglesias:

• Oklahoma Sen. Jim Inhofe and Rep. Frank Lucas have introduced a bill that would prohibit every government agency — except the military — from buying more ammunition each month than the monthly average it purchased from 2001 to 2009. This is to stop Obama creating an ammunition shortage.
• The theory goes that after Obama failed to push through his gun control legislation, he is seeking alternative means to restrict gun ownership; by buying up all the ammo.
• This has lead in some sectors to panic buying of ammunition, and ‘buying my kids ammo instead of savings bonds’
• Which is, Matthew writes, exactly what the USA needs right now. The USA needs stimulus in domestic markets, which means buying is better than saving.
• And if people insist on buying bonds and not ammunition? Then increase the supply of bonds, and use the money raised to buy ammo anyway, helping the economy.

So do we find ourselves in the position of wanting to perpetuate a myth in order to stimulate the economy? Read more from Matthew over here, or for more background and context check out Salon or The Guardian

Source: Slate and Salon

See also: The Guardian

The Economist produced a chart that looked at estimates of the size of various black markets:

• Drug trafficking is worth an annual $320 billion a year and is thought to be by far the largest black market in the world.
• 21% smaller is the second placed market for counterfeit and pirated goods, worth $250 billion.
• Human trafficking is worth $32 billion and is 68% bigger than the market for wildlife trafficking. Human organ trafficking is worth $0.6 billion.
• The numbers are inexact and come from various years. The estimates are based, in part, on seizures by border control agents.

Read more about other markets and their comparative size, in a striking chart over here.

Source: The Economist

What happens when a South Asian math major come sociology PhD student teams up with Steven Levitt? Some pretty interesting insights into gangland economics;

• In the 1980s, being a gang leader meant power, influence and respect but no money. Marijuana just didn’t make enough cash.
• Crack-cocaine changed this; a drug that could be smoked, very addictive, but a short lived high.
• In terms of management structure, gangs are a lot like a MacDonald’s franchise. A local leader can set up, get his own crew, and use the main gang’s name and reputation in their local area.
• A footslogger in a gang might make around $3.50 an hour…many gang members actually work at MacDonald’s part time. A gang leader, however, makes in the order of $100,000
• The death rate for the lowest rank of gang member is 7% per year. For soldier’s in Iraq (2004) the figure was around 0.5%. Gangs understand this, and members get paid more when the violence gets worse
• Gangs could go into their neighbours territory and start shooting into the air. This would terrify locals and destroy their rival’s drug market. But they mainly don’t, as the other gang could do the same thing to them… inner city game theory.

A brilliant 20 minute insight, published in 2004. It’s well worth a listen or read, to find out how gangs parallel the dot com boom and why it’s important for gang leaders (and maybe CEOs?) to pay themselves handsomely even when the lowest ranks can’t get paid. Read more over here

Source: TED

Rowan Jacobsen took a look at the history of the apple:

• Each apple tree is different. The seeds that turn into a tree are a combination of the father’s and mother’s genes, and produce a brand new type of apple. Most aren’t that great.
• But when a new tree does produce good apples, the only way to get more of that type of apple is by cloning it through a graft of one of its shoots.
• Therefore every Granny Smith apple is produced from a direct clone of a tree that first grew in 1868.
• America used to have thousands of strains of apples each unique in its own way, but the rise of industrialized farming led to most people settling on just a few different types of apples.
• America’s prohibition is also partly to blame for the decline in diversity of apples. Some of them made excellent ciders but died out when alcohol was banned.
• Nowadays new strains of apples are protected by intellectual property rights that restrict how they can be grown, and require a licensing fee for each apple that is produced.

Read more about the man who’s trying to identify, catalogue, and revive America’s various apples, what different apples such as Wolf River and Harrison looked like, and what the hunt for an apple is like over here.

Source: Mother Jones

We’ve previously covered the excellent personal analytics that Wolfram|Alpha offers through your Facebook profile. Now they’ve aggregated the information that was analyzed and come out with some interesting findings:

• The median number of Facebook friends is 342.
• The proportion of people “in a relationship” peaks around the age of 24. Those “engaged” peak around 27.
• Between the age of 40 and 60, the fraction of people reporting themselves as “single” increases for women, but decreases for men.
• Teenage boys generally have more friends than teenage girls – potentially because they’re less selective about who they friend.
• Men are more likely to talk about movies, television and music. Women enjoy talking about pets and health.

As with all Wolfram|Alpha posts, this summary is an injustice to what it a fascinating, concise, comprehensive article illustrated with brilliant charts and graphs. You should really read through it over here.

Source: Stephen Wolfram Blog