Soap operas generally have a bad reputation. They’re thought of as vapid dramas that lack any real depth. However Stephanie Hegarty argues that soap operas have a long history of educating people and changing established norms. Some examples include:

• In 1951 the United Kingdom’s Ministry of Agriculture created a soap opera called The Archers that taught farmers ways to increase productivity. 61 years later the show is still running and it is believed to be the longest running soap opera in history.
• In 1975 half of Mexico’s workforce did not know how to read. Miguel Sabido wrote a soap opera that ends with an emotional scene of a father reading a letter his daughter wrote to him. In the next year enrollment in government literacy programs increased by 9 times.
• After Sabido’s success in challenging norms in Mexico, India’s Prime Minister Indira Gandhi invited him to India to help establish a new set of Indian values. In the soap opera that he wrote a Hindu girl falls in love with a Muslim man, and an upper caste man wants to marry a lower caste girl. At the end of each episode a famous Indian personality would encourage families to discuss the themes depicted in the show.

To read other examples, including the soap opera that convinced girls to celebrate their birthdays, the East African soap operas that have encouraged discussions about sexual health, and the soap opera that taught Afghans how to avoid landmines, click here.

Source: BBC

Skyscanner polled over 1000 airline passengers about their airplane seat preferences, when extra leg room isn’t available. Some of the results include:

• The most sought after seat is 6A – a window seat in the sixth row of the aircraft.
• In general the first six rows of a plane are the most popular with 45% of survey respondents picking a seat in those rows as their favourite.
• 60% of passengers prefer window seats and 40% prefer aisle seats.
• The least popular seat is 31E – a middle seat towards the back of the plane.
• Frequent fliers prefer to sit on the left of the plane because the windows are off-center meaning that they can rest their head against the wall.

To read more about the airliner that charges a premium for passengers who prefer to sit in the front of the aircraft, how to minimize turbulence, and where to sit to get the best choice of food, click here.

Source: Skyscanner

Via: Consumerist

John Paczkowski reports that one analyst predicts that Apple will become the first company in history to have a market capitalization of more than a trillion dollars. Highlights include:

• When Apple’s share price hits $1,072 it will be worth $1,000,000,000,000
• Topeka Capital Markets is predicting that Apple’s share price will hit $1,111 per share in in 2013.
• An analyst noted that the iPhone 5 and an iPad Mini were expected to launch in that timeframe and would likely drive growth.

To read more details and find out why Apple is a juggernaut, the role that China has to play, and how it’s not just Apple’s share price that is reaching for the clouds, click here.

Source: All Things D

Jeff Winkler had the opportunity to sit down with a drug dealer who primarily dealt in marijuana. Highlights from the interview include:

• The drug dealer holds a legitimate job, but on most weeks he makes about $400. On really good weeks he might make up to $600.
• He estimates his hourly wage to be $36.
• He got started selling drugs because he realized that as a supplier he would essentially be able to smoke it for free.
• Without dealing drugs he would be forced to live paycheck to paycheck. This way he is able to afford luxuries for himself such as foreign beers.
• He believes that the risk of him spending time in jail for a first offense is low because he’s white.

To read the three part interview, and to find out about supply-and-demand in the drug dealing world, whether he intends to turn his drug business into a franchise or a pyramid scheme, why he might soon keep a lawyer on retainer, and whether or not he is willing to extend his customers credit, among many other topics, click here.

Source: The Bill Fold

Via: Newmark’s Door

Disneyland is busy trying to pioneer the next generation of theme park experiences. Some of the things in the Disneyland of the future will include:

• The end of lines. Through the use of a system called xPASS families would be able to book a place in line for rides and interactions with Disney celebrities weeks and months before they visit the park.
• All guests will likely be given wrist bands with embedded chips that allow the park to track them. The chip will have the individual’s name, credit card number, and favourite attractions. As the guests walk around the park random attractions may move to greet you.
• These features might be unveiled as soon as 2013.

To read more about some privacy concerns, why this might generate more revenue for Disney, and some early signs that the systems are being set up, click here.

Source: Fox News

Via: Marginal Revolution

The BBC reports that the world’s richest men are scheming together not, as the comics would have you believe, to take over the world, but to extract minerals from asteroids. Highlights include:

• The billionaires plan to use robotic spacecraft to mine gold and other precious metals.
• The spacecraft would be self-fuelling. They would convert resources on the asteroid into fuel.
• The founders of Google and James Cameron, the director of Avatar and Titanic, are just two of the people funding the initiative.
• Scientists are skeptical. They note that while gold is £35 per gram, it costs NASA $1 billion to return 60g of matter from an asteroid.
• The first step is to launch space telescopes to find suitable mineral rich targets for mineral extraction.

Centives’ guess? It’s all a cover for the billionaires to find a way to control the trajectory of comets and then hold the world hostage. Although it does lead to the question…what on Earth (heh) could the billionaires possibly demand?

To read more about why this is not a charity, the space-structure that they aim to establish in the next ten years, the identity of other people backing the project, and what the backers and the skeptics have to say about it, click here.

Source: BBC

Timothy Taylor reported on a working paper that looked at the top 1% of society and examined some trends over time. Highlights include:

• Non-Finance Executives, Medical Professionals, and Farmers have declined as a proportion of the 1% between 1979 and 2005.
• Finance Professionals, Lawyers and Real-Estate Professionals have all risen in the same period.
• The largest income gains since the 1980s have gone not to the 1%, but, in fact, the 0.1%.

To see expanded tables and to read more about how income as a share of GDP has risen, as well as which profession has seen income triple, and how the data may have changed since 2005 click here.

Source: Conversable Economist

Ryan Paul had the opportunity to go to Facebook headquarters and get a behind the scenes look at how a typical Facebook update deployment works. Highlights include:

• Minor updates to Facebook happen every day. Major updates happen every week – usually on a Tuesday. This rapid development schedule is part of the reason for Facebook’s agility and success.
• The frequent updates make testing difficult. There are three main stages of testing. First after the developer submits the code, the update is rolled out to all Facebook employees. After that the pages of a small number of randomly selected public users are updated. If there are no problems then the update finally goes out to everybody’s page in a process that takes about half an hour. There is rarely any downtime.
• During the update rollouts every developer is expected to be on hand in case of any problems. Developers are responsible for the code they submit and if their code breaks down they have to fix it. Those that do badly get a thumbs down and can accumulate negative karma.
• Facebook monitors several sources of data for evidence of problems with updates. These include Twitter streams and how favourably people are tweeting about Facebook.
• There is a well-stocked bar where the release engineering team works. The team leader sits within arm’s reach of the bar.
• After a successful update the developers celebrate by taking a few shots.

To read more about Facebook’s plans for the future, the one man in the world who has access to a dislike button, how disgraced developers can increase their karma through alcohol, and the 1.5 gigabyte binary executable file that creates the magic, click here.

Source: ArsTechnica