Isegoria

NPR interviews chemist John Emsley, whose new book The Elements of Murder: A History of Poison, “chronicles cases of accidental and intentional use of lethal substances throughout the ages.”

Those crazy mycophiles are at it again. From The Great Alaskan Morel Rush of ’05:

Alaska’s 2005 morel season actually started in the summer of 2004, when the state experienced its largest recorded wildfires, which burned more than 6.7 million acres, much of it around Fairbanks and Tok. Fairbanks locals wore dust masks for weeks, and a resident of Chicken, 60 miles from Tok and on the fire line, expressed the opinion that ‘there are two seasons in Alaska, winter and smoke.’

What was a trial for humans and wildlife was a treat for mycelia, the underground fungal webs that produce mushrooms. In a process known as mycorrhiza, mycelia form a symbiotic relationship with the roots of trees and other plants, the fungi receiving sugars and amino acids they need to grow, the roots receiving water and minerals. But morels are clever, as one theory has it, and instead of dying when trees do — in a fire or by insect infestation or other major disturbance — they tap a rush of nutrients from the decomposing roots, and thrive.

Tracking wildfires in order to locate next year’s crops is Wild Mushrooming 101. And most species that grow on the West Coast are reliable: Every spring there will be morels from Northern California to British Columbia; chanterelles flourish in the Pacific Northwest’s coastal regions in late summer; and come fall in central Oregon there’s the matsutake, a mushroom so highly prized by the Japanese that in years past it has sold for $1,200 a pound.

Of course, dependent as it is upon acts of god or accidents of nature, the mushroom trade is extraordinarily risky. Colloquially known as ‘cash in the woods,’ it can be quite profitable. In 2004, Alpine Foragers’ Exchange, the company Jay Southard buys for, purchased more than 200,000 pounds of chanterelles for as little as $1.50 a pound and sold them for as much as $6.50 a pound. But it can just as easily be ruinous: This year’s morel harvest in Oregon was one of the worst on record.

Alaska is the great unknown on the mushroom circuit, having produced them on a commercial scale only once, after fires in 1990 resulted in what are often recalled as ‘carpets of morels’ near Fairbanks and Tok. If this ever happened before, no one had paid much attention, but by the spring of 1991 wild mushrooms had become a culinary essential, and a few prescient buyers made their way to the state. They were amply rewarded. That year, the 98,000-acre Tok River Fire yielded a morel harvest of 300,000 pounds. By comparison, this year’s burn is nearly 70 times larger.

(Hat tip to mi amigo, Todd.)

Robots to offer Japan’s elderly new lease on life describes the new HAL 5 exoskeleton:

The sleek, high-tech get-up looks like a white suit of armor. It straps onto a person’s arms, legs and back and is equipped with a computer, motors and sensors that detect electric nerve signals transmitted from the brain when a person tries to move his limbs.

When the sensors detect the nerve signals, the computer starts up the relevant motors to assist the person’s motions.

Sankai says the suit, dubbed “Hybrid Assistive Limb (HAL) 5,” can let a person who can barely do an 176-pound leg press handle 397 pounds.

“The big goal is to expand or strengthen the physical capability of humans,” said Sankai, who set up a venture firm last year to market the robot suit and plans to start leasing HAL-5 to the elderly and disabled in Japan this year.

Tinted Contact Lenses For the Weekend Warriors describes one more high-tech sporting good poised to make the transition from the pro leagues to the consumer market:

The Baltimore Orioles have an unlikely secret weapon this season: Brian Roberts’s contact lenses.

Mr. Roberts, a second baseman who leads the American League in hitting, has been testing a new type of prescription contacts developed jointly by Nike Inc. and eye-care-products maker Bausch & Lomb Inc. The tinted contacts, which give Mr. Roberts a devilish red-eyed appearance, function much like sunglasses by cutting down on glare.

[...]

Nike’s MaxSight Sport-Tinted Contact Lenses will sell for about $20 a pair. Nike says a red-colored version cuts blue light to make a fast-moving ball stand out more clearly. A green-colored pair enhances red and green light to help a golfer better see the slope of a putting green.

‘When I first put them on, it was the last day of spring training and it was bright and sunny, and it was just perfect because guys at the plate couldn’t see anything when they were hitting,’ Mr. Roberts wrote in an email. ‘They would come back from the dugout saying, ‘I can’t see!’ and that day I went 3 for 3.’

Good Old Fashioned Fiscal Discipline describes the Republic of Genoa’s unique fiscal policy institution:

Government budget deficits are a worldwide problem. Ondrej Schneider, an economics lecturer from Prague’s Charles University, recently proposed a solution. Schneider outlined the idea of an independent non-partisan regulatory body, which would oversee fiscal policy in the same manner as central banks govern monetary policy. It has been convincingly shown that truly independent central banks can successfully tame inflation and reduce the risk of monetary crises. Why not use a similar prescription to cure the chronic fiscal diseases of modern economies?

The very notion of political independence of fiscal policy may sound oxymoronic to many. What’s more political than state budget and public expenditures, after all? However, Schneider’s idea not only has sound theoretical background, it is also time-tested. An arrangement based on an independent fiscal policy regulatory authority once worked in the Republic of Genoa — successfully for centuries.

From 1407 until 1805, there was a financial institution called Officium procuratorum Sanctii Georgii super diminutione debitorum (St. George’s Supervisory Authority to Reduce Indebtedness, literally translated). San Giorgio, for short. It was a specialized financial institution aimed at protecting the interests of government bondholders and diminishing the risk that the Republic would not meet her obligations.

San Giorgio was built on no profound economic theory. Its origins were purely practical. Until 1528, when energetic leader Andrea Doria came to power, the Republic of Genoa had suffered from notoriously weak government, the result of persistent conflicts between feudal nobility and the merchant class. The credit quality of the government was poor. Creditors formed associations to protect their interests. These organizations were subsequently recognized by the government as formal partners. By the beginning of the 15th century, public debt became so heavy that the Republic created San Giorgio, formed on the basis of these associations. San Giorgio was a tool to reduce the debt burden of public finance, says Professor Michele Fratianni, who wrote a remarkable and extremely thoughtful paper on Genovese financial history.

San Giorgio’s legal status was as a joint-stock company with a banking license, whose shareholders were creditors of the government. It purchased government debt for its clients’ money and collected the due part of taxes. San Giorgio was far more than just an interest group lobbying on behalf of creditors, though. Its main strength was expert knowledge in the field of public finance and risk management. The institution managed fiscal policy to the point that it dictated to the government the extent of maximum allowed indebtedness — in a similar manner in which modern risk management departments dictate commercial banks the allowed level of credit risk. Besides that, the government partially outsourced tax collection to San Giorgio — tax farming, as this practice was called. The most important favorable result of the independently governed fiscal policy was reduced risk of government default. The Republic of Genoa thus could have borrowed money at lower rates than it was common in other Italian city-states.

San Giorgio introduced an investment security that hasn’t quite been replicated since:

The financially savvy Genovese also invented a special class of securities: sort of a cross-breed between government bonds and preferred stocks.

“The Bank of San Giorgio issued, on behalf of the Republic of Genoa, placements of perpetual bonds, called luoghi, at a nominal value of 100 lira each. Their income was secured by specific taxes farmed out to the bank. The luoghi did not pay a fixed rate of interest […] but paid dividends which depended on the amount of taxes collected after payment of the expenses of the bank,” write Sidney Homer and Richard Sylla in their book, A History of Interest Rates.

The luoghi can be viewed as either dividend-paying government bonds or government preferred shares without voting power. Such a class of securities does not exist in the modern financial world, which is certainly a pity.

The dividend government bonds would be welcome in many risk-averse portfolios of pension funds and insurance companies worldwide, since they are inherently inflation-adjusted (unlike conventional bonds and stocks), carrying sovereign credit risk (as government bonds), but offering theoretically unlimited room for growth (as stocks). Their risk-return-correlation characteristics would most likely make dividend government bonds a desired class of securities. They would offer investors more possibilities of portfolio diversification, while reducing risk of government default and providing government treasuries more flexibility. Not surprisingly, luoghi were in high demand among charities in the times of the Republic of Genoa.

In Take a Hike, Duane D. Freese explains that “It’s what kids do, not what adults say, that matters regarding obesity:

Research shows TV advertising aimed at kids — in terms of dollars spent by the industry, minutes on TV and actually attention paid to it by youngsters — has gone down even as childhood obesity has gone from 11% in the period 1988-90 to 16% in the 1999-2002 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey.

As Todd Zywicki, a former FTC director of policy planning and now a George Mason University law professor who examined research on child advertising and obesity said, ‘The case for saying advertising is the cause of increasing obesity in children is pretty weak.’

A recent Lancet study explains the real problem: kids aren’t active anymore.

Just two to five hours of brisk walking a week — 17 to 43 minutes a day — would prevent girls gaining 9 to 20 pounds, according to the study.

Starbucks sells more than coffee and scones; it sells lots and lots of CDs. According to At Starbucks, a Blend of Coffee And Music Creates a Potent Mix, one challenge is choosing the right music for their increasingly diverse customer base:

Five years ago, about 3% of Starbucks customers were between the ages of 18 and 24, 16% were people of color, 78% had college degrees, and overall they had an average annual income of $81,000. Today, however, about 13% of the company’s customers are between 18 and 24, 37% are people of color, 56% are college graduates, and they earn on average $55,000 a year.

Bruce Hoffman describes The Logic of Suicide Terrorism:

First you feel nervous about riding the bus. Then you wonder about going to a mall. Then you think twice about sitting for long at your favorite café. Then nowhere seems safe. Terrorist groups have a strategy — to shrink to nothing the areas in which people move freely — and suicide bombers, inexpensive and reliably lethal, are their latest weapons. Israel has learned to recognize and disrupt the steps on the path to suicide attacks. We must learn too.