What Caught My Eye This Week - Magazine Edition

Newsweek

Travel - Nude travel has become a $400 million industry--double what it was 10 years ago--according to the American Association for Nude Recreation. And the business has increasingly gone upscale, trading rustic nudist camps for lavish resorts and extravagant cruises. Two thoughts here. First, there an assocation for this sort of thing? Second, how would you like to be a crew member on one of these cruises. I wonder if the cruise operators have to get volunteers to staff these sorts of voyages?

Business Week

March Madness - More than 100 million Americans, including the estimated 23 million hoop fans with Internet access at work (yes, I'm one of them), are expected to follow this year's NCAA men's basketball tournament. Here are a few off-the-court stats:
$1.2 billion: Estimated cost to employers in lost productivity during the tournament
6%: Companies planning to 'take steps' to prevent workers from going to tournament Web sites
67%: Workers who say the joined 2006 office pools, of whom 57% bet on March Madness
57%: Taxpayers who say they are 'not very likely' to report tournament winnings (one can only assume the other 43% 'definitely will not')
$7,250: Top ticket price paid for the 3 Final Four games
$200: Lowest price paid for the 3 Final Four games; NCAA price: $155 to $204
$500 million: Estimated network TV ad revenue
$177,000: Amount awarded by the NCAA to each athletic conference for each game played by one of its teams

The Week

March Madness - U.S. workers take an average of 13.5 minutes out of every work day to visit sports web sites during the NCAA Tournament. Sure that may sound like a lot, but that's 13.5 fewer minutes spent downloading porn, so I'm not exactly sure what the problem is.

World Population - The world's population of billionaires climbed to a record high of 946 in 2006. Microsoft chairman Bill Gates topped the list for a 13th consecutive year with a fortune of $56 billion. I'd like to see how much he's worth at the end of this year. That Vista operating system that Microsoft just released is crap.

Depression - Americans are the unhappiest people on Earth according to a new study by the World Health Organization and the Harvard Medical School. In a survey of 14 nations, the U.S. had a greater percentate of depressed people (9.6%) than Lebanon (6.6%), Mexico (4.8%), Italy (3.8%) and Japan (3.1%). The least depressed nation in the survey was Nigeria (0.8%). In defense of the survey results, look who we have running things...not exactly the most popular guy on the face of the planet. However, I must say that I find these results a bit suspect. Really, how can we be the most depressed when we are home to the happiest place on Earth, Disneyland?

Israel - Israel recalled its ambassador to El Salvador after he was found naked and tied up in bondage gear outside his ambassadorial residence. Police discovered the drunken diplomat wearing nothing but sex toys. Now there's a disturbing image.

Entertainment Weekly

American Idol - Entertainment Weekly has published its list of odds for who will win Season 6:
Melinda Doolittle: 2-1 (she definitely has the most talent in a pool of lackluster finalists)
Blake Lewis: 4-1 (one of the top two male competitors)
LaKisha Jones: 9-2 (my pick for runner-up)
Chris Sligh: 7-1 (the other guy with respectable talent)
Stephanie Edwards: 8-1 (won't win, but still better than all the guys)
Chris Richardson: 10-1 (won't win, but has charisma)
Gina Glocksen: 15-1 (this year's Chris Daughtry, but not as good)
Phil Stacey: 25-1 (dude has range)
Brandon Rogers: 30-1 (odds are worse than that; he got voted off this week)
Jordin Sparks: 32-1 (my dark horse pick)
Sanjaya Malakar: 100,000-1 (and that's being generous)
Haley Scarnato: 100,001-1 (my guess is she's next to go)