Results for “markets in everything” 1803 found
Those new service sector jobs (Star Wars markets in everything)
Darth Vader Is in Demand at Summer Weddings
Forget flower girls. Couples want stormtroopers throwing petals, and Vader leading the congo line.
There is, however, a shortage. Note this:
Disney forbids the garrisons from participating in certain events without approval, such as gatherings that promote a local business or professional sporting events. Weddings are allowed because they’re considered “community service.”
The 501st has had to adopt an unofficial list of rules to narrow the number of wedding requests. That includes sufficient space to get dressed in costume and having drinking water available on hot days. The plastic and rubber costumes offer no ventilation. “They’re basically death traps,” said Mr. Johnson, who recently returned from a Star Wars event in Singapore where three people dressed as stormtroopers passed out from the heat.
Here is the full WSJ story, via the excellent Samir Varma.
Washington Metro Qatar markets in everything
Metro significantly relaxed its policies on extended hours for the Washington Capitals’ run to the Stanley Cup Final, including extending service for Thursday night’s series win without ever planning for any cash to change hands, WTOP has learned.
Since last summer, Metro has required a $100,000 deposit for each additional hour of service, and Metro suggested Wednesday that the Capitals’ parent company, Monumental Sports and Entertainment, would cover those costs for Thursday night’s game.
In fact, Thursday night’s extended service was part of a trade between the Caps and Metro that Metro valued at $100,000, Metro spokesman Dan Stessel said in an email…
Revised requirements issued last year normally call for the $100,000 deposit two weeks ahead of an event for each extra hour of service. Instead, Metro is billing each of the other groups that agreed to pay for the extended service for Capitals playoff games after the fact, Stessel said…
The bills being sent to those other groups — Qatar (via the Downtown BID), Comcast and Uber — will already include the discount for any fares paid during extended hours of service.
Here is the bizarre story, via Bruce Arthur. For those of you who don’t get the joke, the D.C. Metro system shuts down too early relative to when many sporting events are likely to end.
Barter history teaching markets in everything?
The governments of Myanmar and Israel signed an agreement on Monday that will promote Holocaust education in Myanmar and allow each country to determine how it is depicted in the other’s history textbooks.
The agreement provides for a variety of joint initiatives that feature in standard agreements Israel has signed with other countries, such as encounters between educators and students from both countries and joint study trips. The two countries will also “cooperate to develop programs for the teaching of the Holocaust and its lessons of the negative consequences of intolerance, racism, Anti-Semitism and xenophobia as a part of the school curriculum in the Republic of the Union of Myanmar.”
Here is the unusual story, via a retweet from the excellent Chris Blattman.
Markets in everything
Meditation app Calm provides what it calls “bedtime stories for grown-ups” (an eclectic mix of lullabies, fairy tales, and short stories in audiobook form). But it’s now added highlights from the GDPR legislation to its roster, narrated aloud by former BBC radio announcer Peter Jefferson, who is famous in the UK for his readings of the Shipping Forecast — a nightly maritime weather report that’s cherished by non-maritime listeners for its repetitive and ritual qualities.
Jefferson doesn’t read the entire legislation (“which would take more than all night”), but he picks out more than half an hour of material, which is enough to send anyone to sleep. You can listen to an excerpt for yourself below, or download the app from Google Play or the App Store. Unfortunately, you have to pay to unlock the full GDPR reading (and a number of other Calm features), but you can test them all with a seven-day free trial.
Here is more, via the excellent Samir Varma.
Dental DNA Beatle rent-seeking markets in everything
A DENTIST who bought John Lennon’s tooth is looking for potential love children of the late-Beatle in a bid to stake a claim to his £400million estate.
Dr Michael Zuk, 45, from Alberta, Canada, purchased the legendary songwriter’s decayed molar at auction in 2011 for around £20,000…
Speaking with The Sun Online, the dentist has sensationally revealed that he plans to stake a claim to the music icon’s vast estate using DNA from the body part.
He said: “I am looking for people who believe they are John Lennon’s child and have a claim to his estate and hopefully I can legitimise their claim.
“John was a very popular guy who was having sex with lots of women and I doubt birth control was on his mind.
…“I would ask anyone who is participating to sign a commission agreement which would mean if they were related they would pay my company a percentage of their inheritance.
“Like a finder’s fee.”
Here is the story, via Michael J.
P.s. Solve for the equilibrium.
Music markets in everything
Markets in everything, metals from dead bodies edition
The recycling bin behind the cremation chamber is the first tip-off that Elgin Mills Crematorium, north of Toronto, is up to something different.
The green bin is full of medical implants, including titanium hips and knees, stainless steel bone screws — even gold teeth.
The pieces gathered here were, until recently, inside the bodies of deceased people. Cremating a body incinerates nearly all biological material, but artificial materials can be collected quite literally out of the ashes.
But the Mount Pleasant Cemetery Group, which operates Elgin Mills Crematorium, has adopted a system not only to safely recover these materials but recycle them with a rather altruistic buyer — who compensates them based on what they pass on.
Here is the story, via Shaun F.
Thwarted markets in everything
Stephen A. Schwarzman, the Wall Street billionaire, was prepared to cut a $25 million check to the high school he attended here in the 1960s, to help it pay for a huge renovation project.
He wanted only a few things in return.
For starters, the public school should be renamed in his honor. A portrait of him should be displayed prominently in the building. Spaces at the school should be named for his twin brothers. He should have the right to review the project’s contractors and to sign off on a new school logo.
The school district’s officials accepted the deal.
So it was that this Philadelphia bedroom community of 55,000, not normally a hotbed of civic unrest, exploded into a populist fury.
That is from Kate Kelly at the NYT.
Malthusian dog markets in everything
An effort that animal rescuers began more than a decade ago to buy dogs for $5 or $10 apiece from commercial breeders has become a nationwide shadow market that today sees some rescuers, fueled by Internet fundraising, paying breeders $5,000 or more for a single dog.
The result is a river of rescue donations flowing from avowed dog saviors to the breeders, two groups that have long disparaged each other. The rescuers call many breeders heartless operators of inhumane “puppy mills” and work to ban the sale of their dogs in brick-and-mortar pet stores. The breeders call “retail rescuers” hypocritical dilettantes who hide behind nonprofit status while doing business as unregulated, online pet stores.
But for years, they have come together at dog auctions where no cameras are allowed, with rescuers enriching breeders and some breeders saying more puppies are being bred for sale to the rescuers.
Here is more from Kim Kavin at WaPo, substantive throughout with photos and video. In essence, somebody has solved for the equilibrium.
For the pointers I thank Tom Vansant and Alexander Lowery.
Owl markets in everything
A U.K. photographer said a newlywed couple has no regrets about choosing an owl to be their ring bearer, even though it flew at a member of the wedding party during their ceremony.
Mark Wood and Jeni Arrowsmith wed at Peckforton Castle in Cheshire, England, on March 17.
Unbeknownst to their guests, the couple hired an owl named Bobby to bring the rings down the aisle.
Here is the CBC story, and for the pointer I thank Michelle Dawson.
China simulated death markets in everything
Beijing’s biggest funeral parlor held an open day last Thursday that featured a virtual reality simulation of death, reported The Beijing News — though it left some wondering why you would want to experience death prematurely.
Visitors could don VR glasses and earphones to experience having a seizure at work, a failed paramedic rescue, and entrance into the afterlife. Funeral parlor employee Dong Ziyi told The Beijing News that the immersive experience “enables people to better cherish the beauty of life.”
In addition to the death experience, visitors can use VR to explore funeral services with a five-minute session that goes through corpse delivery and storage, mortuary preparations, the memorial service, and cremation — a tour that would take an hour in real life.
Here is more by Liang Chenyu from Sixth Tone, one of my favorite media outlets.
Markets in everything
Rich People Will Soon Be Able To Buy Fake Meteor Showers On Demand.
In the latest scheme of the booming private space industry, a Japanese company proposes to light up the night with made-to-order shooting stars…
The fireworks will come courtesy of a satellite some 220 miles high, owned by the world’s first “aerospace entertainment” firm, Astro Live Experiences, or ALE.
The brainchild of University of Tokyo astronomer Lena Okajima, the spacecraft will circle the globe and kick out 15 to 20 small metallic pebbles on command.
Here is the story, and for the pointer I thank DL.
Markets in everything, probably more where this came from edition
Mr. Sarkozy, 63, was taken into custody in Nanterre, northwest of Paris, after answering a police summons, according to a French judicial official who spoke on the condition of anonymity, in line with department policy…
The suspicions behind this case first emerged in 2012, when the investigative news website Mediapart published a report suggesting that Mr. Sarkozy’s 2007 campaign had received up to 50 million euros, or nearly $62 million at current exchange rates, from the regime of Colonel Qaddafi, the longtime Libyan strongman who was killed in 2011. Such support would have violated France’s strict campaign finance laws, which cap spending and prohibit foreign funding.
Here is the NYT account. Here is my earlier post on Gerhard Schröder.
The surprise vacation (markets in everything)
Companies like Magical Mystery Tours and the Vacation Hunt, both based in Washington, D.C., have made surprise vacations their specialty, while more traditionally oriented operations like Rustic Pathways, which focuses on teen travel, and London-based luxury outfitter Brown + Hudson have added mystery trips to their already robust lineups.
The company picks the destination and does all the work planning the trip:
So, how does a destination get chosen? Most American mystery travel companies, including Pack Up + Go, require clients to take a survey. When booking my trip, I was asked where I’d been recently, and where I’d be heading soon, so the company could avoid those places. I was also asked to select from a long checklist of interests and to write in additional comments. I didn’t request a warmer destination, though I easily could have.
Here is the full story from Matthew Kronsberg at the WSJ.
For the pointer I thank the excellent Samir Varma.
Markets in everything
“They do what they want,” she says. “After the earthquake you would see [foreign workers] asking to have sex in exchange for supplies. I never did it, but I saw some people who did.”
A UN report, published in May 2015, found that members of its peacekeeping mission in Haiti traded sex for aid with more than 225 women between 2008 and 2014.