That Entrepreneurial Spirit

• The "trendy" 25hours Hotel Bikini Berlin, located adjacent to the Berlin Zoo and offering some of the best views of the city from its floor-to-ceiling windows, has famously positioned the rest rooms of its Monkey Bar in front of the windows, also, and those heeding nature's call are clearly visible to gawkers. Guests are merely warned, by the Trip Advisor website and by the hotel itself (with the admonition, "Please be careful. Not only the monkeys are watching"). [Daily Mail (London), 7-30-2014]

• London designer Gigi Barker recently unveiled the Skin chair (priced at the equivalent of about $2,500), made of leather but with a "pheromone-impregnated silicone base" that makes it feel (and smell, perhaps) like one is "lounging in the fleshy, comforting folds of a man's belly." The Skin was scheduled for exhibition this month at the London Design Festival. [Quartz, 7-25-2014]

• China's insurance companies offer some of the world's quirkiest policies, according to a September Reuters dispatch from Hong Kong. People's Insurance Group, for example, will pay out in case a customer's children display disappointingly "mischievous and destructive" habits. The Ancheng company offers a policy protecting a customer in case his mouth is burned eating "hotpot." Ping An Insurance Group (actually, the world's second-largest by market value) has recently offered an "accidental pregnancy before honeymoon" policy, and is one of three companies that competed to sell couples compensation in case a marriage is disrupted by a "concubine." [Reuters via Business Insider, 9-1-2014]

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