As far as I can tell, this is not from Japan:

The custom lifesize baby figurine is 8 inches (crown to rump).  The lifesize baby is so called, because a 23-24 week old fetus is about 8 inches from crown to rump.  It comes customized to resemble your baby.  Provide between 1 and 5 images of your baby.  For best results, include a portrait and a side view image.

Don’t forget the Grandparents.  Order more than one 3D Baby and receive 10% off your order by using the Promotional Code LOVE.

Now if only they became taxpayers…

There are good pictures here.  These pictures are even better.  For the pointer I thank Samir Varma.

Anouk Gillis often sports a pair of organic-cotton jeans she ordered online. But she doesn’t actually own them.

Rather than buying the pants, which retail for around €100 ($135), Ms. Gillis signed a 12-month lease with their designer, the small Dutch fashion label Mud Jeans. The terms: a €20 deposit and monthly installments of €5.

After a year, Ms. Gillis, who is also Dutch, can decide to buy the jeans, return them, or exchange them for a new pair.

“The idea was to make high-quality jeans available to everybody,” said Bert van Son, chief executive of Mud Jeans, which promises to recycle the used jeans into new pairs or sell them secondhand at the end of a lease.

The deal shows how companies are trying to reconnect with Europe’s cash-strapped consumers, who increasingly rely on renting, sharing or even bartering for products and services ranging from clothing to vacations to lawn mowing.

There is more here.  For the pointer I thank the man who delivered my morning Wall Street Journal.

This account may to some degree be speculative, but here goes:

According to one avid PF [paid friend] employer, ‘Once you’ve had paid friends who don’t argue with you, it’s actually quite hard to go back to real friends.’

The ex-wife of a PF hoarder said ‘many really successful men don’t actually have time for real friends,’ because normal friends ‘are either resentful or bitter or ask for money,’ and that some ‘are often competitive.’

She said that as a result, ‘very rich men have paid friends as an expensive filter, because they can control them.’

If her ex-husband were not wealthy, ‘he’d be sitting all alone in his apartment with a container of Haagan-Dazs and a bottle of vodka,’ she said.

I say why opt for “paid friends” when you can have a $6,000 Vertu smart phone?

The full story is here, hat tip goes to @ArikSharon.

The Dallas Safari Club said Friday it aims to raise up to a million dollars for endangered black rhinoceroses by auctioning off a permit to kill one in Namibia. The move has raised the ire of wildlife preservation organizations, who question the move’s ethics.

Ben Carter, executive director of the Dallas Safari Club, told Agence France Presse the Namibian government “selected” his hunting club to auction a black rhino hunting permit for use in one of its national parks. Namibia has an annual quota to kill up to five black rhinos out of the southern African nation’s herd population of 1,795 animals.

“First and foremost, this is about saving the black rhino,” Carter said.

The permit is expected “to sell for at least $250,000, possibly up to $1 million,” and will be auctioned off at the Club’s annual convention from Jan. 9-12 next year. The Conservation Trust Fund for Namibia’s Black Rhino will receive 100 percent of the sale price, the Club said.

There is more here, courtesy of the excellent Mark Thorson.

A Japanese company has finally found a possible answer to out of control spending. A so-called “Living Wallet” is equipped with runaway skills, the ability to call out for help, and dodge your ready-to-reach-out hands rolled into one. It’d be no surprise if Rebecca Bloomwood would swear by it to keep her shopaholic tendencies.

The folded wallet has wheels that make it move away once it detects your hands reaching out for it. But if you happen to get a hold of the wallet, cries of “Don’t touch me!” and “Help me!” can be heard. If you’re persistent enough, it activates its last resort to save your bills from being spent and your cards from being swiped. It automatically sends an email to your mom that you might just find you pleading to a robotic wallet, “Don’t tell my mother!”

The Living Wallet is also connected to a mobile app that checks one’s spending, all to make sure that one stays away from unnecessary shopping or any impulsive buying. That’s what you can expect once you put your Living Wallet in “Save Mode.” If you put it in “Consume Mode,” you can expect something else yet, still a little crazy.

Once you let it know that you have enough money for spending, it puts on Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9, 4^th Movement.

There is a bit more here, with photos and a short video, via the excellent Mark Thorson.