Centives

Apple helped reduce the amount of meaningless statistics thrown about when it came to gadgets. Things like gigahertz, megapixels, and even gigabytes, don’t mean what people think they do. But by marketing the iPad as 4G Apple has taken a step back argues Farhad Manjoo who believes that the 3G/4G label should be dropped entirely. Here’s why:

• A wireless standard known as HSPA+ was referred to as 3G for most of recent history, because it was the third generation of wireless technology.
• When LTE came about it was referred to as 4G because it was the fourth generation. LTE was initially much faster than HSPA+.
• However engineers figured out how to make HSPA+ even faster than LTE in theory. This now meant that in the future a 3G device would be faster than a 4G device. To solve this, companies were allowed to refer to their HSPA+ networks as 4G.
• The problem though is that while HSPA+ can theoretically be faster than LTE, it currently is not. Therefore Apple’s customers were mislead into thinking their iPhones got faster when the 3G label was replaced with the 4G label in the latest upgrade. The speed remained the same, all that changed was the label.

To read more on why somebody selling you a 4G device “thinks you’re a fool”, why AT&T criticized others when they first took the decision that it is emulating now, and why even true 4G doesn’t mean anything anyway, click here.

Source: Slate

David Brooks writes “If the 20th century was the century of the population explosion, the 21st century… is looking like the century of the fertility implosion”. He notes:

• Iran’s average birth rate is now similar to New England – the region with the lowest fertility in the United States.
• In Middle Eastern countries in particular the drop in birth rates has been record-breaking.
• This is a problem because, as Tyler Cowen notes: “These societies will be old before they will be wealthy. Which means perhaps they will never be wealthy.”
• This doesn’t necessary have to be true. South Korea and Taiwan managed to grow despite declining birth rates. But it’s much easier to grow if you have a growing population.
• European and Asian countries are dealing with the same trends.
• Due to immigration the United States’ birth rate remains relatively high but if everybody else is getting older then American living standards will still be hurt.

To read what people mean by the “Gray Tsunami”, the implications of Russia’s high death rates and low birthrates, and why even India’s population growth might run into problems click here.

Source: The New York Times

Via: Marginal Revolution

Women do two-thirds of the world’s work, yet only make 10% of the world’s money meaning that there’s still a lot of work to be done in the quest for gender equality. Western European countries are normally held up as the pinnacle of female/male equality but David Kenner and Uri Friedman at Foreign Policy note that some surprising countries have made rapid strides. They include:

• The Philippines is the most impressive Asian country on the list.
• Spain which in the 1970s didn’t allow women to serve as witnesses or open bank accounts had, in 2011, more women than men in the country’s cabinet.
• South Africa and Lesotho are the best sub-Saharan African countries for women. Lesotho managed to edge out its much larger neighbor in the rankings.
• 71% of Latvia’s university graduates are female, and the supreme court is evenly split between men and women.
• Cuba comes out top among Latin American countries.

To read more about each of these countries, the substantial effort that most of these countries still have to make, and the (sometimes male) feminists that drove these achievements click here.

Source: Foreign Policy

Via: Freakonomics

Lawrence Lessig argues that lobbying isn’t the “pay money to x” and “get outcome y” that most people think it is. Highlights include:

• If lobbyists really worked the way we thought they did then you would expect that they would spend their time trying to ‘bribe’ those who disagree with them. But this isn’t the case. Lobbyists actually concentrate on those who already agree with them – people who are already likely to vote in their favour.
• In fact despite extensive statistical analysis, it has been difficult to find evidence for systematic vote buying.
• In a sophisticated, bureaucratically complicated legislative arena, lobbyists are actually professionals who are intelligent experts that understand the complexities of the situation. They don’t tell legislators what to do, rather, they help legislators achieve what they already want to achieve.
• But this does not mean that the practice is ethical. While lobbyists aren’t buying votes they are helping to set the agenda. Only certain issues receive the guidance provided by lobbyists, causing other issues to be left by the way-side.

To read why the problem is one of human relationships, why embedded in the lobbying world is a gift economy rather than a cash economy, how Jack Abramoff fits into all of this, and why today’s lobbyists look like boy-scouts compared to the lobbyists of old, click here.

Source: The New York Review of Books

Via: The Atlantic

The target of the newest crime wave sweeping the United States? Tide Laundry Detergent. One man stole $25,000 worth of it. The Prince George county police department refers to it as “liquid gold.” As it turns out the product’s characteristics make it ideal as a currency for the drug trade:

• Its retail price is relatively high and moderately steady.
• There are no serial numbers, making it impossible to track.
• It’s widely available and easier to steal than other products that are often locked down.
• Its Day-Glo orange packaging makes it instantly recognizable.

To read about the drug-bust that turned up more Tide than cocaine, what CVS is doing about it, what the parent company Procter & Gamble thinks about it, and how individuals go about stealing it, click here.

Source: The Daily

Via: Marginal Revolution, BoingBoing