If the California initiative passes, “we will be on our way to getting GE-tainted foods out of our nation’s food supply for good,” Ronnie Cummins, director of the Organic Consumers Association, wrote in an letter in March seeking donations for the California ballot initiative. “If a company like Kellogg’s has to print a label stating that their famous Corn Flakes have been genetically engineered, it will be the kiss of death for their iconic brand in California — the eighth-largest economy in the world — and everywhere else.”
Here is much more. Why not require labels warning customers of all sorts of phantom harms? “Warning: this product contains dihydrogen monoxide!”
A sex shop in Munich’s main railway station has got special permission to sell condoms, porn DVDs and sexy skin lotion on Sundays after three local judges ruled they were legitimate travel supplies.
The owner of Erotic World had appealed against the city council’s decision to stop him opening on Sundays – on the grounds that shops in the railway station were exempt from Bavaria’s strict Sunday trading laws.
But this only applies if they sell products that can be considered souvenirs or travel supplies such as food, disposable cameras, newspapers, magazines, books, DVDs, and CDs.
The shop argued in court that it also had such goods on its shelves, even if their content was rather more spicy than what the station’s newsagents had to offer.
“This is the decision of the court … since the above articles can be considered ‘travel supplies,’ regardless of their content,” a court statement issued Wednesday said.
Nonetheless the rule of law prevailed:
But the judges added that the shop could not sell other erotic items in its range, such as sex toys. In fact, especially sex toys.
Three administrative judges visited Erotic World ahead of the court hearing to inspect the shop’s goods, carefully assessing whether each item might come in handy on a long journey.
Condoms were considered useful enough, but the judges ruled that the old favourite sex game “Erotic Ludo” should still be taboo on the day God has designated the day of rest.
The full article is here, and for the pointer I thank CR.
Last month the International Monetary Fund warned that eurozone banks were likely to embark on massive deleveraging over the following 18 months, to the tune of $2.6tn.
Here is more, from Gillian Tett, on the ongoing theme of the de-europeanisation of Europe. By the way, she suggests that number may be an underestimate.
This is from Elias Canetti’s memoir, volume three, The Play of the Eyes:
When friends had told him that someone had praised The Man Without Qualities to the skies and would be overjoyed to meet him, Musil’s first question was “Whom else does he praise?”
I am happy to praise these memoirs too.
1. Are used TVs being overpriced?
2. The science of love in the 1920s, from Hugo Gernsback.
3. The dark side of Irving Fisher.
4. New sensory organ discovered in whales.
5. Freakonomics interview on the economics of food, including also Michael Pollan and others.
Rahul, a loyal MR reader, asks:
You seem a very productive person and travel quite a bit too. Are you very cell-phone savvy and does it impact your productivity? Any apps you love or use a lot? (Do you play chess on the move! )
Can you blog about your personal cellphone selection strategy. Curious what phone(s) you use.
Ditto for Laptops. What’s your selection strategy. Small versus large screen real estate. What’s your personal optimum.Also, Mac / PC / or Linux? What’s your ecosystem and what do you love/hate about it.
Would love a blog post on these topics! It’s convenient to imitate the choices of a productive person!
No, I am not cell phone savvy, as I still do not know how to send a text (just this year I learned how to read one). In any case, here is my ecosystem:
1. Verizon cellphone. Very simple, I use it only for calls, the keys are very convenient and otherwise it has no features which I either understand or use.
2. iPhone, latest edition. I never use it for calls unless I am overseas, in which case it becomes my cellphone for receiving calls (no reason to make them in other countries). I use it for email, and not for apps, and occasionally for visiting websites such as this one. I have spent time with some apps to learn how they work, but for research purposes. Overall their closed systems do not appeal to me.
3. iPad 1.0. It’s beautiful, it was important, mine has a nice case on it, and I don’t want to part with it. Plus I have some windows kept open on it. By carrying around two iPads I can keep more windows open, without being confused.
4. iPad 3.0. Better than the original iPad (which as we’ve seen is already worth carrying around), and the web connection works internationally and very well. I now feel connected to the important information just about everywhere. It has changed my life.
5. I don’ t know what kind of laptop I have, although I guess I could look. It’s not optimized for anything, except perhaps my own ignorance. It’s not an Apple Mac, I know that, and I am glad I got rid of Vista.
6. Kindle. I still prefer real books, but for long plane rides, or sometimes even short plane rides, the carry costs of books are high. So it gets plenty of use.
Here is an article on why so many Nigerians own more than one cell phone.
Addendum: Tim Harford lays out his system.
With the city’s trapping program a failure, some residents are getting a bigger monkey, a langur, to urinate around their homes. The acrid smell of the urine scares the smaller rhesus monkeys away for weeks.
…”Mr. Singh said that he had 65 langurs urinating on prominent homes and buildings throughout Delhi. He and his partners feed and walk each monkey during the day, but they remain tied to their posts overnight. He charges about $200 a month.
Here is more, and for the pointer I thank Umung Varma.
This is about Washington, D.C.:
…hard data always trump anecdotal information, and that emerged from Inrix, which determined that the worst of the worst — the time you least want to be behind the wheel — is from 5:45 to 6 p.m. on a Thursday, the peak of congestion in a region that regularly chokes on its own fumes.
Elsewhere in the nation, Friday is the most congested day of the week, as city residents headed out of town for the weekend add to the daily mix with commuters headed home.
There is more here. Is this a “work for the government and telecommute” effect? Or an “our region produces only services” effect? Or something else altogether?
I will try to do my best in responding to your requests for topic coverage, please leave those requests in the comments section…
1. Via Chris F. Masse, new solutions to Greek problems, using iPads, and this is coming soon to your Mac, maybe it can patch up Spain.
2. Does self-deception inhibit laughter?
3. Are chimp personalities similar to those of humans?
4. Review of the new Google car.
5. Do people like spoiled stories more?
Those results come two weeks to the day after Keith Judd, a convicted felon incarcerated in Texas, won 41 percent of the vote against Obama in the West Virginia primary.
There is more here.
Getting lawmakers in the seat of a self-driving Prius has become Google’s M.O., according to Matthew Newton, editor of DriverlessCarHQ.com, a site dedicated to covering autonomous cars. “Google has been giving free rides to policymakers in California, Nevada and Florida,” Newton told Wired from his home base in Melbourne, Australia. “So it makes sense that they would do it in D.C.”
Eric Cantor, for one, was given a ride.
Noah Smith writes:
In Japan, there is no big private equity industry, because it is very difficult to do a leveraged buyout of a company. The Japanese government allows companies to defend themselves from takeovers in ways that are illegal in America. Also, Japanese companies often hold each other’s shares, a practice known as “cross-shareholding”, which tends to prevent hostile takeovers. Cross-shareholding creates huge financial risks; however, many of the Japanese companies that engage in cross-shareholding are big banks that are backed by the government (much as ours are here in the U.S., but more explicitly), so this risk is assumed by the Japanese taxpayer. For a comprehensive primer on Japanese corporate governance, see here.
Upshot: In Japan, private-equity firms cannot buy companies and force them to restructure.
Fact 2: Japan has a productivity problem. We think of Japan as being super-productive, and in fact some industries (and most export-oriented factories) are. But overall, Japanese productivity kind of stinks. Since at least the 90s, Japan’s Total Factor Productivity has lagged far behind that of the U.S. Nor is this due (as Ed Presott has tried to claim) to a slowdown in technology; it appears to be a function of how resources are allocated within and between Japanese companies.
