Centives

In its latest issue New York Magazine took a look at how much it would cost to drink from modern medicine’s fountain of youth. Working with plastic surgeons they estimated how much it would cost every year for an actress to look like she was 19 again. Their findings include:

• When you’re 25 it’d cost just $49,000 for procedures such as a lip filler and ultrasound cellulite therapy.
• At the age of 35 it still only costs $51,000 to turn the years back to the late teens.
• By the age of 45 it’s time to re-do the breast implants and you can expect to pay $55,000 for that and other procedures.
• When you hit 55 you’ll have to fork out $66,500 to regain vitality that still only runs skin deep.
• Over the years the costs total up to $856,000.

To read more about the procedures necessary and a precise cost breakdown click here.

Source: New York Magazine

Via: Newmark’s Door

A 30 second ad-slot in this weekend’s Super Bowl can cost as much as $4 million. What explains the fact that since 1980 Super Bowl viewership has only increased by 50% but advertising prices have seen a shocking tenfold increase? Slate reports:

• The NFL is the only type of television event that is able to draw a wide audience.
• Research suggests that companies that buy Super Bowl ads see their share prices outperform the S&P 500 in the subsequent week. This relationship holds despite controlling for several factors.
• It is unclear if this is a short-term irrational burst in investor exuberance, or if the ads actually create lasting value.
• Other studies suggest that movies that are advertised during the Super Bowl can see up to a 40% boost at the box office.

To read more about the history of ad prices in the Super Bowl as well as reasons why people might over-pay for Super Bowl ads click here.

Source: Slate

With Bill Gates’ decision to focus on humanitarian work and Steve Jobs’ untimely passing the world has lost a rivalry that helped the computing industry to soar to new heights. ZDNet reports that a new rivalry might be about to begin:

• For years people thought that Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos would be the next leader of technology. However unlike the Gates-Jobs rivalry, the Amazon chief doesn’t have a foil – a clear competitor who he can be measured against.
• Facebook’s impending IPO will give Facebook the resources necessary to compete with Google.
• Zuckerberg and Page have already gone toe-to-toe on several initiatives including mobile computing and social networks.
• However Facebook appears to be approaching the fight with an integrated approach that co-ordinates Microsoft. In particular Facebook appears to be comfortable working with Microsoft’s Bing to compete with Google’s search services.

To read about other areas where Zuckerberg and Page have competed in the past, as well as which tech luminary each will be channeling click here.

Source: ZDNet

Wired writes that: “The next generation of gearheads won’t obsess over horsepower and torque; they’ll focus on things like radar range, communication latency, and pixel resolution” in an article that examines the current state of cars that drive themselves. Some of the things they found include:

• Premium cars today run 100 million lines of computer code. This is more than Boeing’s new 787 Dreamliner Aircraft
• Google compares teaching cars to drive themselves to mining the web so that people can find the pages they’re looking for when they search. For example just as Google’s algorithms must go through large amounts of data on the web, they must also analyze road data to decide what certain objects are and how they can be navigated around.
• Mercedes has also been working to develop the technology. They note that cars can already do a lot of automatic work. Their cars:
  • Monitor 70 points of information about baseline data such as steering wheel movements and indicator use. When performance is significantly different from the baseline the car assumes that the driver is fatigued and suggests getting a cup of coffee.
  • Automatic wiper activation in rain.
  • Automatic headlight illumination.
  • Notifications in the sideview mirrors if another car is in the driver’s blind spot.
  • Lane drift detection
  • Automatic breaking systems.
• Challenges still remain. Cars must learn to drive on roads without lane markings, and must adapt to local driving cultures.

To read more about how the cars of the future will be like the horses of old, why these changes won’t make us feel uncomfortable, and some of the moral and ethical challenges that the new technology poses click here.

Source: Wired

Via: Marginal Revolution

In 1982 Atlantic Magazine took a look at the Diamond market and wrote that “It is conservatively estimated that the public holds more than 500 million carats of gem diamonds, which is more than fifty times the number of gem diamonds produced by the diamond cartel in any given year… The moment a significant portion of the public begins selling diamonds from this inventory, the price of diamonds cannot be sustained.” How did diamonds occupy such a prominent space in our culture? Here are some highlights from an article that looked at the earliest history of the diamond market and subsequent developments over the decades:

• Diamonds have no intrinsic value beyond their scarcity and so the discovery of new diamond mines in 1870 caused existing diamond producers to band together and form a cartel called De Beers.
• The huge influx of supply meant that De Beers had to find a way to ensure that diamonds were never resold. Some measures that they took to (successfully) accomplish this include:
  • De Beers relentlessly exploited the latest advancements in mass media such as motion pictures and televisions by having stars and idols market the diamonds for them.
  • The British Royal Family was used to foster the romantic allure of diamonds.
  • De Beers associated their diamonds with unique works of art made by artists such as Picasso and Dali to emphasize that their products were unique and invaluable.
  • Lecturers visited high schools and gave talks about diamonds and engagement rings, guiding the romantic expectations of millions of young girls around the United States.
  • Newspapers were provided with descriptions of the latest diamonds worn by movie stars in an effort to enhance the desirability of the diamonds.
• After successfully penetrating the American market De Beers looked to expand its reach to other countries. Its initiatives in Japan were the most successful. The cartel managed to overturn 1,500 years of Japanese wedding tradition by associating diamond engagement rings with a modern, western life.

To read more about how DeBeers worked with the Soviet Union to sell African diamonds to American women, why thieves are likely to avoid stealing them, what the Great Diamond Crash might look like, and the subtle psychology reminiscent of Victorian-era novels that is involved in the gift of a diamond from a man to a woman, read the entire 7 page report here.

Source: The Atlantic

Researchers at IBM have been analyzing twitter and have found some interesting trends:

• Starbucks is mentioned on twitter 10 times a second.
• Lady Gaga gains followers faster than twitter adds new accounts.
• Wait times at airports can be predicted through twitter.
• It’s possible to figure out where in the United States you come from just from the type of tweets you send out.
• People are more likely to tweet something negative than positive.

Interested in twitter? You might want to follow our own twitter account, here.

To read more about the new Twitter language and what IBM intends to do with twitter data next click here.

Source: Business Insider

Via: Eve Tahmincioglu

Nielsen, a marketing and advertising research company incorporated the latest census figures into its estimates of the prevalence of televisions in the United States. Highlights from the report include:

• The percentage of households with a television dropped from 98.9% to 96.7%.
• Reasons for the decline include changes in broadcast technology and the cost of owning a television.
• The report notes that while the number of televisions has fallen, in absolute terms Americans are consuming more forms of media through platforms other than the TV, such as the internet.

Read the entire report here and find out the wider historical context of the numbers.

Source: NielsenWire

Via: Marginal Revolution

Slate notes that there have been a number of famous figures who have recently died soon after they retired. Can retiring kill you? Slate reports:

• Studies suggest that it’s possible that those who retire early are likelier to die early. However it’s difficult to be sure because a lot of people who retire early often do so for health reasons.
• If the relationship does exist then it’s speculated that this is because the everyday routine of getting up and going to work keeps you both physically and mentally fit. Losing that daily routine can hasten your mortality.
• It’s also possible that people lose the will to live after they retire.

Read about some of the more notable people that have recently died post-retirement as well as some of the other issues that might be involved over here.

Source: Slate