Everybody loves the experience of eating fruits that were grown in one’s own garden. The problem, however, is that few of us have enough space to plant more than a couple plants. As it turns out however it is possible to get a single plant to yield an assortment of fruits…enough to create your own home-made garden picked fruit salad. Ferris Jabr wrote:

• By combining together the branches and stems of different plants it is possible to create one super organism that grows several different types of fruits.
• Some examples include a single tree that can grow peaches, plums, nectarines, apricots and peachcots. Another can grow winter oranges, summer oranges, mandarins, lemons, limes, grapefruits, tangelo and pomelos.
• Farmers have engaged in this practice for years – mostly for practical reasons. They attached the kind of plant they wanted to grow to the roots of another plant that grows well in the local soil. This is why most of Florida’s orange trees have the roots of lemon trees, and why in California the reverse is true.
• Some of the combinations are quite creative. A pomato plant grows potatoes under the ground and tomatoes above the ground.

Read more about how these plants are made, some ground rules for making them, why you can’t always trust a seed, and some of the other fascinating combinations, over here.

Source: Scientific American

In The Knockoff Economy Kal Raustiala and Chris Sprigman argue that brands actually benefit when counterfeiters sell cheap copies of their products. Highlights from an excerpt posted on Freakonomics include:

• When people buy a cheap knock-off of a famous product they’re implicitly sending the message that the original is so desirable that it’s worth it to buy a counterfeit.
• This kind of endorsement is excellent marketing for any brand.
• Since the counterfeits are often of low quality, it’s very easy to distinguish between the authentic product and the ones you can buy from a street seller.
• One study found that 40% of those who bought a counterfeit went on to buy the genuine product later on, meaning that the counterfeit is often used as a test run for the original.

Read more about what this means for companies with trademarks by reading the full excerpt over here. You can find the book here.

Source: Freakonomics

On land hurricanes create devastation and destruction. But what effects do they have on our intelligent friends under the ocean? Jason G. Goldman reported on a study that attempted to answer the question:

• In the years after Hurricane Katrina there was a massive increase in the number of (bottlenose) dolphins.
• This might be because the hurricane caused the destruction of boats; and since dolphins don’t appear to like boats this meant that they could spend more time hunting and eating.
• The destruction of boats also meant that the rate of fishing was lower, meaning that there was more food available for the dolphins, increasing their numbers.

To read other factors that might explain the surprising result, click here.

Source: Scientific American

Atul Gawande got an inside look at how The Cheesecake Factory is able to deliver such great food at surprisingly low prices. We’ll get to the healthcare part of it soon enough but highlights of just the restaurant chain’s production process include:

• Most of the 308 items on a Cheesecake Factory menu are made from scratch. Only the Cheesecake itself is premade…at an actual factory for cheesecake in California.
• All Cheesecake Factory kitchens are designed in the same way. They are made to look like real factories with manufacturing lines that begin with raw ingredients which are chopped up, and end with the finished product.
• There are computer monitors in the kitchens that show the orders assigned to the station. The touch screens illustrate what the finished product should look like and also detail the raw ingredients to use and the steps of the recipe.
• The screen includes a timer that shows how long the item should take to prepare. Once it approaches the target time the background turns yellow. If it’s late it turns red.
• Yet the screens only show what to do – not how to do it. Each cook brings their own experience and style to the recipe. Care is taken to not let the food look manufactured.
• Before the food goes out it is rated on a scale of one to ten. An eight means that a couple of corrections are needed. Anything lower than a seven is immediately rejected and must be remade.
• If a restaurant orders too many groceries, then they rot away, wasting money. Order too few and customers will become frustrated and leave. The Cheesecake Factory aims to throwaway no more than 2.5% of the groceries it purchases. This is a phenomenal target as it requires near-perfect knowledge about which kinds of food customers will order.
• These forecasts are done through models that monitor both recent and long term rends, and take into account things such as sporting events that will likely keep people at home.
• Every six months a new menu item is introduced – anybody can suggest it. The CEO himself enjoys suggesting and sampling new ideas.
• Rolling out the new dishes to all of the cooks, servers, and restaurants across the United States takes just 7 weeks.

But how does this all fit into healthcare? Gawande notes that “restaurant chains have managed to combine quality control, cost control, and innovation” on a very large scale across hundreds of locations. This is exactly the challenge that health care in the United States faces today, and there is much to learn, especially in terms of standardization.

To find out exactly what lessons need to be learnt and how test projects have performed check out the full article here.

Source: The New Yorker

Via: Newmark’s Door

The Senkaku/Diaoyu/Diaoyutai Islands, an area claimed by Japan, China, and Taiwan, have recently become the center of attention for stirring up nationalist sentiment in the three countries. Helen Gao reported on an unnoticed story that could have big ramifications:

• Despite nationalist outbursts in China, in an online poll that was quickly taken down by the government, 40% of Chinese said that if a child was born on the islands they would want Taiwanese nationalism for them.
• Hong Kong and Japan were the next most popular. China was the least favoured choice in the Chinese poll.
• This unexpected result appears to be due to frustrations with the ruling communist party of China.
• Respondents of the poll pointed to the better standards of living in other countries as the reason for their choice.
• However they remained loyal to China, and considered themselves patriots.

In a time when non-democratic regimes seem to be facing their end, it’s a small story that might signal a much more tumultuous future for Asia. You should read it here.

Source: The Atlantic

Via: Marginal Revolution

There’s a debate going on in economics circles about America’s performance as a charity (although things could be worse). The latest entrant into the fray is Bryan Caplan:

• The US government accepts donations. You can put extra money into the general fund.
• In 2011 Americans contributed about $3.2 million.
• Yet Americans give over $300 billion a year to charity. The US commands a vanishingly thin share of the overall charity market.
• Potential ways to increase the amount of donations that the US receives include:
  • Having the President raise money for the country rather than for their own campaign.
  • Congress acknowledging the most generous donors in an annual ceremony.

It’s an interesting debate that ties into wider political themes. To read more about why libertarians love to discuss this phenomenon, how this does (or doesn’t) tie into the Prisoner’s dilemma, why bringing up Warren Buffet’s contributions are a red herring, where the majority of American donations come from, and other historical details, click here.

Source: Library of Economics and Liberty

Via: Marginal Revolution

James Vlahos reported on a fascinating financial instrument:

• It is possible to sell your life insurance policy so that when you die, instead of your family, the person you sold it to benefits.
• The buyer of the policy agrees to pay your premiums and gives you instant cash. In return they hope you die soon so that they don’t have to pay too many premiums, and can pocket the difference between what they paid for your life insurance policy, and the benefit that they get.
• Such an arrangement is extremely useful for those that have been in a debilitating accident and know that they will die soon. They can enjoy the finer things in life by selling their policy now for a substantial amount of cash.
• In one such transaction a buyer paid a seller $305,000 for a policy that would award the buyer $500,000 when the seller died. Thousands of pages of medical records verified by independent experts showed that the seller was likely to die in two years, making it a fairly good investment.
• The practice rose in popularity during the AIDS epidemic.
• Some investors like the safety of such an instrument. No matter how well or badly the market does, the value of a life insurance policy remains the same.
• Some people end up living a lot longer than expected. To mitigate the risk it is important to diversify and buy a large number of life insurance policies. Statistically speaking, you should come out on top eventually.

The entire article is fascinating and opens up an intriguing new world. Click here and find out how the life insurance industry feels about the practice, why this is a pro-consumer innovation, the incentive to murder, the historical roots of the practice, its rise during AIDS, the total value of the market, the information problem, the key metrics for such investors, and just so many more intriguing details.

Source: The New York Times

Via: Marginal Revolution

Brian Palmer explained how the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) measures the average temperature across the United States:

• NOAA has 1,218 thermometers, most of which are automated and transmit data wirelessly.
• The average temperature of the country is the average of the high and low for the day, averaged across all 1,218 measuring stations.
• A lot of these weather stations are located around airports because the surrounding areas are sparsely populated leading to more accurate readings.
• The United States has the best data. Temperature worldwide is measured by NOAA through 7,280 thermometers. 32% of the official land-based ones are in the United States – even though it only has 6% of global land mass.

To read more including the statistical tools that NOAA uses to finesse its data, the thermometers used by NOAA, why the thermometers were moved off of urban rooftops in the 60s, how it ensures its data is consistent through the years, and how NOAA measures global temperature, click here.

Source: Slate

John Norris had a simple question: of all the various agencies in the United States, why is the military given billions of dollars to research breast cancer? The answer is fascinating:

• Even though the United States spends more on defense than China, Britain, France, Japan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Germany, India, and Brazil combined, law makers are loathe to cut the Pentagon’s budget.
• Most other agencies get punished if they do badly. The military is the one institution that receives more money if things go bad.
• Thus lawmakers can give funding for projects to the military, and be confident that the funding won’t get cut in the future .
• This explains why the military has funds for researching breast cancer and encouraging the arts.
• The military then gives the funds to the very same agencies that should have received the funding in the first place – since they have the expertise.
• The Pentagon has also began to see economics as a military tool causing it to request money for, and expand into, traditionally non-military fields.
• However there is substantial risk in making the military an inefficient giant bureaucratic organization that allocates money for things that do nothing to protect national security.

To read more about the Pentagon’s untouchable budget, how the concerns about “mission creep” have disappeared, how this ties into the F-35, how this figures into the 2012 Presidential political calculations, military expansion in a time of unwinding wars, the Senator who worked to give Breast Cancer funds to the Pentagon, what “expeditionary economics” are, and the long term risks all of this entails, click here.

Source: Foreign Policy

We get a lot of things for free on the internet these days. For their own sake companies better not dare charge money for them writes Chana Joffe-Walt:

• US Veterans don’t like the Red Cross because during World War 2 the Red Cross would offer free coffee and donuts but soon began to charge for them.
• They only started to charge for them because their British allies had to pay for the same things, and this was creating tensions.
• The change didn’t last long – the Red Cross soon went back to giving donuts away for free. But veterans continue to harbour feelings of resentment.
• The problem wasn’t the price – it was that the positive image that the Red Cross had built was ruined. The resentment stemmed from disappointment.
• Companies that try to charge for products presently given away for free might face a similar backlash – even if the prices were reasonable.

To read more including the economist that discovered the phenomenon, what an archivist for the Red Cross has to say about it, the role of categorical change, and a wider transcript of an interview, click here.

Source: NPR

Via: Freakonomics