Yahoo! Finance and The Week The Trend Desk

• "Stable marriage can increase the financial prosperity of couples and improves the lives of American children, including those being raised by same-sex couples." (Brookings Institution)
  
• As many as 20 percent of wives now make more money than husbands. (St. Louis University)
  
• Self-employed people are more optimistic than wage-earners. (Duke University, National Bureau of Economic Research) And optimism has been generally linked to higher earnings.
  
• Left-handers earn 4 percent more than right-handers. (University College, Dublin)

So here's my foolproof advice for a strong financial future: Marry a left-handed entrepreneur.

I Think, Therefore I Scan

E-commerce has grown up. Now get ready for its pluckier younger sibling: Scan-commerce. Several emerging companies -- among them, Scanbuy and NextCode -- are developing applications that help consumers turn their cell phones into pocket scanners.

At the heart of scan-commerce is Universal Product Code, those commercial zebra stripes stamped onto just about everything. Download special software to your phone, and you can use Scancode's ScanZoom service, to comparison shop from a store aisle. Say you're in a bookstore and discover a book that looks interesting. Take a picture of the bar code on the back of the jacket, wait for your phone to connect to the Internet, and you can retrieve reviews or find the retailer offering the best price. Meantime, Semacode is developing a new type of optical bar code that's embedded with a URL. In Japan, for instance, a few billboards feature giant versions of these codes. Point your camera phone at the billboard, snap a picture, and your Internet-enabled phone takes you to a web site where you can buy tickets for the concert that's being advertised or to get a coupon to try the product that's being promoted.

Think of scan-commerce as e-commerce circa 1996. The two-year prospects are modest. The 10-year prospects are mind-boggling. As Scanbuy's Olivier Attia has quipped, he'll know he's made it when stores begin posting signs that say: "No smoking. No pets. No bar-code scanning."

Honk if You Have a Cell Phone

Speaking of mobiles, if you thought making calls in your car was a big deal, wait until you start making calls to your car. Guidepoint Systems has developed a service that "allows subscribers to track their vehicle, unlock doors, start the engine, and honk the horn with a wireless device or cell phone." The company, based outside of Detroit, has already developed GPS-based services used primarily for vehicle recovery and emergency assistance. But its engineers have devised a wireless access protocol (WAP) version with even more capabilities. Now you can use your phone from your living room to honk at the kid who's trampling on your flower bed -- or to find out that your spouse, who claims to be "five minutes away," is actually in another county. Subscriptions cost between $99 and $149 a year.

Peace and War

It might not feel like it, but the world is getting safer. That at least is the conclusion of a research report that crossed The Trend Desk a couple of weeks ago. "The Human Security Report," produced by the University of British Columbia, published by Oxford University Press, and sponsored by five governments, shows major declines in armed conflicts, genocide, military coups, and other forms of political violence. The one exception is international terrorism, which had been declining for two decades but has seen an uptick since the September 11th attacks. In general, though, the data are heartening:

• The number of armed conflicts has declined 40 percent since 1992, while the deadliest conflicts (those with more than 1,000 battle-deaths) have dropped by 90 percent. Wars between countries now account for less than 5 percent of all armed conflicts.
  
• The last 50 years represent "the longest interval without wars between the major powers in hundreds of years."
  
• Not only has the number of wars decreased, so has their human toll. In 1950, the average number of yearly deaths per conflict was 38,000. In 2002 it was 600 -- a 98 percent drop.

What's going on? The authors cite three political changes: The end of colonialism, the end of the Cold War, and an upsurge in international (mostly United Nations) peacekeeping and humanitarian missions. I think there's a fourth possibility: New York Times columnist Tom Friedman's "Dell Theory of Conflict Prevention," which holds that countries in the same supply chain don't go to battle with each other. In a commercially interdependent world, war has higher economic costs, which increases incentives to avoid it. It's globalization's way, perhaps, of giving peace a chance.

Tattoos R Us

At last, body art a parent can love. Iconoculture reports on Tattoos With a Purpose, which sells temporary tatts for tykes. The tattoos, which last for seven days, say, "If I am lost please help me be found" and have space for the parents' phone number." Designed for field trips, family vacations, and shopping malls, the tattoos cost $2 apiece or $10 for a six-tattoo kit.

Do you have an item for The Trend Desk? Ping me at dantrend@danpink.com.