Roots of Chinese Officials’ Lies; To understand China’s politics you have to learn how her officials speak

September 19, 2013, 12:59 p.m. ET

Roots of Chinese Officials’ Lies

To understand China’s politics you have to learn how her officials speak.

PETER NEVILLE-HADLEY

Princeton Professor Emeritus Perry Link draws on 30 years’ worth of notes about the Chinese language’s quirks to construct a revealing picture of how Chinese involved in politics think. The country may have been torn apart by a century of ideological struggles, but the maddeningly malleable manner of expression known as guanhua or “official language” has united the warring factions. Mr. Link dissects the mechanisms by which the modern rulers of China both consciously and unconsciously use language to club the populace into submission. There are important lessons here for those who deal with China on any level. Take for example the tendency to lapse into sloganeering. Chinese signs recommending caution when crossing the road, or reminding lavatory users to flush, often use seven-syllable 2–2–3 rhythms called qiyan, one of the building blocks of poetry. To the Chinese ear this meter not only sounds “right” but the rhythm lends their instructions authority. This has made it popular with propagandists. Even at the height of the Cultural Revolution, when Red Guards condemned all that was traditional, Mao Zedong used the same classical form, Linghun shenchu gan geming: “Make revolution in the depths of your soul.” Read more of this post

Buffett Says Federal Reserve Is Greatest Hedge Fund in History; laments lack of investment bargains

Buffett Says Federal Reserve Is Greatest Hedge Fund in History

Billionaire investor Warren Buffett compared the U.S. Federal Reserve to a hedge fund because of the central bank’s ability to profit from bond purchases as it accumulated a balance sheet of more than $3 trillion. “The Fed is the greatest hedge fund in history,” Buffett told students today at Georgetown University in Washington.

To contact the reporters on this story: Noah Buhayar in New York at nbuhayar@bloomberg.net; Marci Jacobs in New York at Mjacobs63@bloomberg.net

Buffett lauds Bernanke but laments lack of investment bargains

7:32pm EDT

By Jonathan Stempel and Peter Rudegeair

(Reuters) – Warren Buffett said on Thursday he would recommend reappointing Ben Bernanke as Federal Reserve chairman, while adding that low interest rates have inflated asset values and complicated his hunt for investments at his company Berkshire Hathaway Inc. The billionaire investor spoke one day after the central bank surprised investors by postponing its expected wind-down of monetary stimulus, which has in five years more than tripled the Fed’s balance sheet to above $3.6 trillion. Read more of this post

The father of history: Translating Herodotus; A new version of the most entertaining of historians

The father of history: Translating Herodotus; A new version of the most entertaining of historians

Sep 21st 2013 |From the print edition

Herodotus: The Histories. Translated by Tom Holland. Penguin Classics; 834 pages; £25. Buy from Amazon.co.uk

OVER the course of the past decade Tom Holland, a British popular historian, has produced a succession of highly readable works of fiction and non-fiction about the classical world. He has adapted Homer, Virgil and Thucydides for the radio and, as a labour of love and at a rate of a paragraph a day, he has translated Herodotus, the man Cicero called “the Father of History”. Mr Holland’s preface states that “Herodotus is the most entertaining of historians”, indeed “as entertaining as anyone who has ever written”. This lively, engaging version of the “Histories” provides ample support for what might otherwise appear to be a wild exaggeration. Read more of this post

8 Creativity Lessons from a Pixar Animator

8 Creativity Lessons from a Pixar Animator

‘I want to put a ding in the universe.’ ~Steve Jobs

By Leo Babauta POSTED: 09.16.2013

Sometimes immersing yourself in the creative world of people doing amazing things can bring unexpected results. My son Justin is interested in 3D animation, and my daughter Chloe is into screenwriting, and so it was a thrill to take them on a tour of Pixar Animation Studios, courtesy of one of the Pixar animators. Bernhard Haux is a “character technical director”, which in his case means he models characters and works on their internal motions (I think — I didn’t fully grasp the lingo). Which means he is just a small piece in the larger Pixar machine, but a piece that’s aware of what everyone else is doing too. He’s worked on major movies such as Up, Brave, Monsters U and others in the last 6 years. Bernhard was gracious enough to show us around the Pixar campus, and while we couldn’t really dig into their super-secret process, we did get a few glimpses of the magic. And as a result of these small glimpses, I learned some surprising things. I’d like to share them here, in hopes that they’ll inspire others as they inspired me. Read more of this post

Chipotle serves up a masterclass in digital marketing; Fast-food chain’s video captures imaginations

September 19, 2013 6:21 pm

Chipotle serves up a masterclass in digital marketing

By Emily Steel

Fast-food chain Chipotle Mexican Grill is redefining how to market to consumers in the commercial-zapping, constantly distracted digital age with its latest viral campaign that attacks the processed food industry. “The Scarecrow”, a three-minute animated video, follows a worker at Crow Foods Incorporated, a dystopian factory that purports to feed the world. The scarecrow, who stands as a symbol of the protector of food, quickly learns that the food processed in the plant is anything but real. Set to a haunting Fiona Apple version of “Pure Imagination”, a song from the 1971 film Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, the scarecrow discovers a conveyor belt churning out “100 per cent beef-ish” meat. Chickens, advertised as “natural”, are pumped full of a neon green liquid. The mood lifts when the scarecrow returns to his home on a farm, picks a red pepper – the Chipotle logo – and starts preparing his own fresh food.

Read more of this post

Close observers of consumers; Anthropologists can shed light on areas that market researchers fail to reach

September 19, 2013 6:20 pm

Close observers of consumers

By Emma Jacobs

John Curran spent weeks shadowing British people going about their daily business. He was there on the school run, he followed them to the supermarket and lurked in cafés while they sipped cappuccinos. Mr Curran is not a private investigator hoping to uncover a dirty secret but an anthropologist – a social scientist who studies human behaviour through systematic observation – working on behalf of a greeting card company. His task? To discover events in need of commemoration. Read more of this post

Evidence shows life ‘originated from space’, say scientists

Evidence shows life ‘originated from space’, say scientists

2013-09-20 02:45:06 GMT2013-09-20 10:45:06(Beijing Time)  SINA.com

Scientists believe they have found the first evidence of life arriving to Earth from space, which could “completely change our view of biology and evolution”. The team, from the University of Sheffield, made the discovery after sending a balloon high into the stratosphere. On its return they found organisms that were too large to have originated from Earth. Professor Milton Wainwright, who led the team, said the results could be revolutionary. He added: “If life does continue to arrive from space then we have to completely change our view of biology and evolution. Read more of this post

The Rise of Compassionate Management (Finally)

The Rise of Compassionate Management (Finally)

by Bronwyn Fryer  |   8:00 AM September 18, 2013

Don’t look now, but all of a sudden the topic of compassionate management is becoming trendy.

A growing number of business conferences are focusing in on the topic of compassion at work. There’s the International Working Group on Compassionate Organizations. There’s the Changing Culture in the Workplace Conference. Then there’s Wisdom 2.0, dedicated to “exploring living with greater awareness, wisdom and compassion in the modern age.” The speakers are no slouches: eBay founder Pierre Omidyar, Bill Ford (yes, that Bill Ford), Karen May (VP of Talent at Google), and Linked In CEO Jeff Weiner top the bill. At TED, Karen Armstrong’s talk about reviving the Golden Rule won the TED prize in 2009 and has given rise to a Charter for Compassion signed by nearly 100,000 people. Read more of this post

Cancer Follows Epic Trail From Dinosaurs to Tumbleweeds

Cancer Follows Epic Trail From Dinosaurs to Tumbleweeds

A yearlong odyssey into the world of cancer a while ago made me reluctant to devote much time to reading about the illnesses of others. But George Johnson’s “The Cancer Chronicles: Unlocking Medicine’s Deepest Mystery” drew me back into the chaotic realm of homicidal cells, starting with his drive along the Dinosaur Diamond Prehistoric Highway in western Colorado. Once this area was filled with frolicking saurians who ate each other and then died out, leaving only the tiniest traces for the paleo-oncologist. Tissue decomposes, bones disintegrate. Even so, evidence is mounting that cancer has been around since the early days. The Hadrosaurus, for instance, seems to have had a genetic disposition for tumors near the end of its spine. Why? Was it a plant the creature dined on? Or perhaps X-rays from outer space that damaged its DNA? (This might support a theory that cosmic rays killed off the dinosaurs.) A science writer for the New York Times and other publications and the author of several books including “In the Palaces of Memory,” an intriguing road map through the brain, Johnson writes with imaginative flair about the whole range of the cancer experience, from nutritional puzzles, clinical trials and wounds that do not heal to the endlessly complex ways a cell can create “something alien inside you.” Read more of this post

The cofounder of unconscious thought theory explains how taking a break and distracting the mind can lead to higher-quality decision making

August 27, 2013

The Thought Leader Interview: Loran Nordgren

The cofounder of unconscious thought theory explains how taking a break and distracting the mind can lead to higher-quality decision making.

by Ken Favaro and Amy D’Onofrio

Could you boost the quality of decision making and innovation at your company by encouraging a more structured form of intuition? Loran Nordgren thinks you could. Indeed, the associate professor of management and organizations at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management argues that adopting new approaches to how we process thought is the remedy that will free organizations from the shackles of traditional strategic planning. Read more of this post