Tuesday's Assorted Links
Rice export bans, paying for seats, space economics, Dolly Parton, and fast food wages
Hi, y’all! Here are 5 stories from the past week that I found really interesting:
India is considering limiting the ability to export rice amid following a severe supply decrease [Reuters]
There’s an app at Cornell that allows students to pay other students to drop courses so they can get into a class [The Cornell Daily Sun]
Space Economics 101 [The Royal United Services Institute]
The pet apparel industry needs more product differentiation, so Dolly Parton has decided to set up shop [NPR]
The California legislature recently passed a bill that would create a government panel to determine wages for fast food workers [The Wall Street Journal]
Yesterday I wrote about some of the economic concepts associated with pumpkin spice lattes:
Week 35 is over and I’m up to 37 books for the year. This past week I finished a fiction and non-fiction book. On the fiction side, I wrapped up The Woman with a Blue Star by Pam Jenoff. Two Jewish families take to the sewerage system under Kraków during World War II to avoid capture by the Nazis. Overall, it was a solid work of historical fiction and a reasonably quick read.
The other book I finished last week was Back to Earth by Nicole Stott. The NASA astronaut shares how the lessons she learned on the International Space Station can be applied to solving the earth’s environmental challenges in the coming years. I usually enjoy reading biographies by astronauts, but this is less of a memoir and more of a “lessons learned” type book.