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Tornadoes Take Weekends Off?

January 15, 2012 in Daily Bulletin, Signature

Researchers have found a fascinating pattern. During the summer in the Eastern US storms occur 20% above average in the middle of the week and 20% below average over the weekend. What’s causing tornadoes to take weekends off? And if they suffer from weekday fatigue are they also affected by the Monday blues? While the researchers have failed to respond to our request for comment on the latter question they did have some theories for the former:

  • Air pollution peaks in the middle of the week due to commuter traffic. Moisture gathers around the specks of pollution which leads to more cloud droplets.
  • This relationship does not hold true in the west because the air is too dry and the clouds are too high
  • The researchers conclude that their study: “provides yet another good reason for reducing air pollution”

To read more about the science behind the phenomena click here.

Source: National Geographic

Via: Freakonomics

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The Most Popular Consumer Electronic Websites

January 14, 2012 in Daily Bulletin

Nielsen Produces a “State of the Media: Consumer Usage Report” that looks at various things including the popularity of different consumer electronics websites. Some of the findings include:

  • Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, Mozilla, and CNET made up the top 5 sites
  • Microsoft is the most popular consumer electronics websites with 94 million unique US visitors a month
  • Visitors to Apple’s site stay for the longest time, spending an average of 1 hour and 2 minutes per person
  • Women were more likely to visit these websites than men. Over 75% of women were likely to visit a consumer electronics site while only about 70% of men were

To read more about different types of websites; the most popular ones; and how their popularity varies among the genders, click here.

Source: NielsenWire

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Where Were the American Elite Educated?

January 13, 2012 in Daily Bulletin

Slate produced an interactive data visualization that looked at America’s elite leadership and their education. The data includes included business leaders, University Presidents, sports team owners and politicians. Some of the interesting findings include:

  • A large proportion of leaders travel very far away from home to go to school. The exceptions are congresspeople, senators, and governors who normally stay close to home.
  • The Executive Branch, the Judiciary, the Senate, and University leadership normally come from top Ivy League schools. In contrast, Mayors, Governors and Sports team owners, generally go to state universities.

To play around with the graphs and find interesting patterns, trends, and correlations yourself, click here.

Source: Slate

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Strong Correlation between Skyscrapers and Financial Crashes

January 12, 2012 in Daily Bulletin, Signature

Researchers at Barclays have found a strong relationship between the building of skyscrapers and the incidence of subsequent financial crashes. The BBC reports that:

  • Examples of this phenomenon include: The Empire State Building which was built around the time of the Great Depression; Dubai’s Burj Khalifa built as the country almost went bust; The first skyscraper in history: The Equitable Life Building built in 1873 and demolished 39 years later; The Sears Tower and an oil shock; Malaysia’s Petronas Towers and the Asian Financial Crisis.
  • Next up on the danger list are China which is currently the biggest builder of skyscrapers, and India which is building 14 of them. London is also currently constructing The Shard, a skyscraper that will be the tallest in Western Europe.
  • Analysts at Barclays argue that the reason for this phenomenon is that: “Often the world’s tallest buildings are simply the edifice of a broader skyscraper building boom, reflecting a widespread misallocation of capital and an impending economic correction”

Read more about what this could mean for the future of China as well as other developing countries over here.

Source: The BBC

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Sex, Bombs and Burgers

January 10, 2012 in Daily Bulletin

Peter Nowak recently published a book called “Sex, Bombs, and Burgers” that took a look at how the basic human desire to reproduce, destroy, and eat has driven the technological revolution. Salon
sat down with Nowak to interview him. Some of the interesting points from the interview include:

  • Military research into how to move and sustain troops across vast expanses of land and sea made possible the technology that created powderized food and made restaurants such as McDonalds possible
  • Silly Putty was designed to be a replacement for rubber during World War 2 because the Americans and the Japanese were fighting over rubber producing regions
  • The reason why porn companies immediately embrace new technologies and helped to drive the internet video revolution forward is because government regulators are afraid to regulate new technologies because they don’t want to scare away investors
  • Contemporary products that have roots in the military include: Google Maps, Google Earth, Google Translate and Siri
  • For all these reasons and more Nowak calls World War 2 the most technologically important event in human history

Click here to read more excerpts from the interview and see how everything from Skype to Barbie was made possible by the deepest human instincts.

Source: Salon

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The Worth of a Smile

January 9, 2012 in Daily Bulletin

Researchers at Bangor University found a way to value a smile. Some key results of their analysis include:

  • Each smile is worth 1/3rd of a penny, meaning that three smiles will net you one British penny
  • However this is only the case if the smiles are genuine. Non-genuine smiles are worth nothing
  • Genuine smiles during times of misery are not appreciated

To read the fascinating research methodology the researchers used to come to their conclusions as well as the potential implications that this has for bankers and waiters click here.

Source: The Guardian

Via: Sean Goodwin

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China: No Country for Old Men?

January 8, 2012 in Daily Bulletin

Bloomberg recently reported on the ageing problem in China noting that:

  • The latest government census shows 178 million people over 60. By 2050 the UN forecasts that up to 437 million will be – a third of China’s population.
  • This is a challenge that Japan also had to face in the 1990s. The difference is that Japan had the opportunity to deal with it after it got rich. On a per capita basis the Chinese are still relatively poor.
  • The government still expects families to provide for the old but after decades of a One Child policy this is becoming increasingly difficult for them to do.

To read more about the contrasts between some of the facilities available for the elderly as well as the experiences of individual senior citizens in China click here.

Source: Bloomberg

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What Must a Company do to make a Successful Smartphone?

January 7, 2012 in Daily Bulletin

WebOS, the smartphone operating system currently owned by HP and developed by the now defunct Palm, has a fascinating history that involves more twists and turns than a Dan Brown novel. You can review some of the history here. Michael Mace on his blog MobileOpportunity took a look at why WebOS ultimately failed. He outlines a two-step argument.

1) New operating systems always suck.

Operating systems are incredibly complex and always require the software engineers working on them to make several compromises to ensure that the software can ship on time. He notes that: “every new operating system, without exception, is an embarrassing set of compromises that frustrates its creators and does not deliver on the full promise of its vision. ” He points to the original Macintoshes inability to create word processing documents longer than 10 pages as an example of this.

And so the operating systems that succeed are those that survive long enough to be fixed.

2) The way to ensure that your software survives is to have deep pockets and compelling features. WebOS had neither of these things.

Because the first version of your software will be a disappointment you must have the financial capability to slowly refine your product over time until it realizes its full potential. It helps if your software can do something that no other software can because that will guarantee customer loyalty as the software is upgraded. As an example he notes that the original iPhone had various flaws but it succeeded because it did something that no other smartphone could do: make web browsing work well on a phone. WebOS failed on both counts.

The two companies aiming to rebrand themselves and overthrow the dominance of iPhone and Android are Nokia’s Windows Phone and RIM’s BlackBerry. Looking ahead he asks two questions of any company that wants to create a new smartphone platform. Does it have the deep pockets necessary to refine the product over time? And does it have killer features that make it a product worth getting? Only Nokia seems to be able to answer ‘yes’ to the first question and neither Nokia nor RIM have begun to address the second.

To read more about what Mace thinks went wrong for HP, click here.

Source: MobileOpportunity

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Trade among States Engaged in a World War

January 6, 2012 in Daily Bulletin, Signature

Marginal Revolutiontalks about an interesting phenomenon during World War 1. The British War Effort had a shortage of binoculars and so placed an order for several thousand of them from the leading manufacturer of the time, Germany, who was aware that they were being used for militarily purposes. The Germans told the British that if they wanted to find a catalogue of the kind of binoculars Germany would be able to supply Great Britain, they simply had to examine the equipment of German soldiers that The British had captured. On the other hand when the Germans had a shortage of rubber for their war effort the British delivered it to them in Switzerland.

Why did these belligerents help each other out in their efforts to annihilate one another? Marginal Revolution suggests four theories:

  • Because it was a two front war for Germany, the British believed that the Russians would bear the brunt of the cost of aid to the German war machine.
  • Commercial interests in the two countries drove the deal forward
  • Politicians did it to appeal to military lobbies
  • They were mutually beneficial transactions because the two sides disagreed about what the goods were worth. This happens on Wall Street every day.

To read a wider discussion about the issues involved, and to contribute your own theories you can click here, or suggest something in the comments below.

Source: Marginal Revolution.

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Why Do Theaters Charge the Same Prices for Different Films?

January 5, 2012 in Daily Bulletin

Why does a movie ticket for the summer’s biggest blockbusters and the smallest independent flick cost the same at the theater? Derek Thompson at The Atlantic offers four theories:

  • If movie theaters were known to cut prices a few weeks after the film hit the screens then customers would have an incentive to hold off on watching a movie for a few weeks. Therefore theaters avoid cutting the price of movie tickets for any one film over time.
  • Price is also a signal of quality. If you saw that one movie cost less than another, you might wonder about the cheaper film’s quality and avoid watching it.
  • If different movies had different prices then movie-goers may sneak into a more expensive screening after purchasing a ticket for a cheaper film.
  • Theaters don’t want to get into a price war with one another

To read more about how the economics of the movie theater have changed since 1929 as well as other interesting facts and opinions click here.

Source: The Atlantic

Via: Marginal Revolution

 

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