A New Map of How We Think: Top Brain/Bottom Brain: Forget dated ideas about the left and right hemispheres. New research provides a more nuanced view of how we plan our lives and experience the world. Which cognitive mode best describes you?

A New Map of How We Think: Top Brain/Bottom Brain

Forget dated ideas about the left and right hemispheres. New research provides a more nuanced view of the brain

STEPHEN M. KOSSLYN and G. WAYNE MILLER

Oct. 18, 2013 7:57 p.m. ET

Who hasn’t heard that people are either left-brained or right-brained—either analytical and logical or artistic and intuitive, based on the relative “strengths” of the brain’s two hemispheres? How often do we hear someone remark about thinking with one side or the other? A flourishing industry of books, videos and self-help programs has been built on this dichotomy. You can purportedly “diagnose” your brain, “motivate” one or both sides, indulge in “essence therapy” to “restore balance” and much more. Everyone from babies to elders supposedly can benefit. The left brain/right brain difference seems to be a natural law. Read more of this post

Innovative dynamism is the key to economic success and personal satisfaction, Nobel-winner Edmund Phelps argues in ‘Mass Flourishing’

Book Review: ‘Mass Flourishing’ by Edmund Phelps

Innovative dynamism is the key to economic success and personal satisfaction, a Nobel-winner argues

EDWARD GLAESER

Oct. 18, 2013 5:22 p.m. ET

Edmund Phelps’s “Mass Flourishing” could easily be retitled “Contra-Corporatism,” for at its heart this fine book is an attack on that increasingly common “third way” between capitalism and socialism. Mr. Phelps cogently argues that America’s current economic woes reflect a reduction in the innovative dynamism that generates economic success and personal satisfaction. He places little hope in the Democratic Party, which “voices a new corporatism well beyond Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal or Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society,” or in Republicans in the thrall of “traditional values,” who see “the good economy as mercantile capitalism plus social protection and social insurance.” He instead yearns for legislative solons who “could usefully ask of every bill and regulatory directive: How would it impact the dynamism of our economy?” Read more of this post

Hans Riegel, the eccentric billionaire confectioner who gave gummi bears their global bite

October 18, 2013 7:28 pm

Hans Riegel, confectioner who gave gummi bears their global bite

By Michael Steen

For nearly seven decades, Hans Riegel was the eccentric chief confectioner, autocratic business leader and one-man marketing machine who propelled Haribo, purveyor of colourful fruit-flavoured “gummi bears”, from a Bonn backstreet to an envied prominence in global confectionery. Riegel represented, in concentrated form, traits typical of Germany’s family-owned Mittelstand companies. As the business grew, he flew Willy Wonka-like in the face of modern corporate convention, eschewing everything from market research to bank loans and opportunities to take the group public. Read more of this post

Lego builds a solid business, even in the age of multimedia; Lego CEO doesn’t give out business cards when he goes to a meeting. Instead, he fishes out a tiny plastic Lego figurine bearing his likeness

PUBLISHED OCTOBER 19, 2013

Lego builds a solid business, even in the age of multimedia

World’s No 2 toymaker sets up regional headquarters in Singapore, remains confident of Lego’s lasting appeal

LEE U-WEN LEEUWEN@SPH.COM.SG

JORGEN Vig Knudstorp, president and CEO of Lego, doesn’t give out business cards when he goes to a meeting. Instead, the 44-year-old reaches into his pocket and fishes out a tiny plastic Lego figurine bearing his likeness – dark-rimmed spectacles and all – with his full name, telephone number and e-mail address printed on the toy’s clothes. It’s a small but telling sign of the level of creativity that goes on behind the scenes at the Danish company famous for making those colourful interlocking plastic bricks. Read more of this post

Rebooting our brains: ‘The next big scientific frontier lies not in a distant galaxy – but deep inside our minds’

October 18, 2013 4:25 pm

Rebooting our brains

By Gillian Tett

‘The next big scientific frontier lies not in a distant galaxy – but deep inside our minds’

Afew years ago John Donoghue, professor of neuroscience at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, met Cathy Hutchinson, a young woman who was suffering from locked-in syndrome following a stroke. Until recently, this would have condemned her to a life of helplessness and hopelessness: locked-in syndrome means that somebody cannot move their limbs, even if their brains are functioning normally (as Jean-Dominique Bauby described so movingly in The Diving Bell and the Butterfly).

But Hutchinson had a dream: she longed to drink a cup of coffee on her own, in one vestige of normality. And Donoghue was convinced he could help. Over the past few years, he has run a project called Braingate that combines the latest advances in computing science, engineering and mathematics with neuroscience, to map the connections inside the brain – and replicate them on a computer. Read more of this post

The Map and the Territory, by Alan Greenspan, Review by Lawrence Summers

October 18, 2013 7:09 pm

The Map and the Territory, by Alan Greenspan

Review by Lawrence Summers

The Map and the Territory: Risk, Human Nature, and the Future of Forecasting, by Alan Greenspan, Allen Lane RRP£25/Penguin Press RRP$36, 400 pages

It was my privilege to work closely with Alan Greenspan for the eight years I served at the Treasury during the Clinton administration. His new book, The Map and the Territory, brings me back to fond memories of our conversations over the years. I haven’t always agreed with my friend but he has always left me wiser and with something to ponder. Read more of this post

Researchers have been working with tiny robots based on cockroaches as well as with actual roaches—controlled by an embedded chip— to explore collapsed buildings and other dangerous, hard-to-penetrate environments where the GPS doesn’t work

Send In the Cockroach Squad

DANIEL AKST

Oct. 18, 2013 9:16 p.m. ET

Most people hate cockroaches, but in an earthquake, the bugs may someday prove to be lifesavers. Researchers have been working with tiny robots based on cockroaches as well as with actual roaches—controlled by an embedded chip—as a possible means of exploring collapsed buildings and other dangerous, hard-to-penetrate environments where the Global Positioning System doesn’t work. Read more of this post

How Did ‘Intangibles’ End Up in Sports-Speak? A concept starts out in Latin and ends up in the mouth of the Red Sox manager

I Can’t Say What It Is, but He’s Got It

BEN ZIMMER

Oct. 18, 2013 9:01 p.m. ET

When Boston Red Sox manager John Farrell made the decision to keep light-hitting left fielder Jonny Gomes in the lineup against the Detroit Tigers in the American League Championship Series this week, he acknowledged that his choice had nothing do with the numbers. “The one thing that we can’t fully measure is the intangibles that Jonny Gomes brings,” Mr. Farrell said.

Last week, another Red Sox outfielder was hailed in a similar way. Tampa Bay Rays manager Joe Maddon, whose team lost to the Red Sox in the first round of the playoffs, had this to say of Shane Victorino : “He just drips with intangibles.”

In The Dickson Baseball Dictionary, Paul Dickson defines “intangible” as “an unknown, indefinite or elusive aspect of baseball that is not initially perceived.” How did this mystical-sounding term end up becoming so fixed in manager-speak (and not just to describe Red Sox players)?

As an adjective meaning “unable to be touched or measured,” “intangible” entered English in the 17th century from Latin by way of French. It soon made the transition to a noun, just as “imponderable” came to mean “something that is difficult to assess.” As early as 1713, the Church of England clergyman Francis Squire wrote, “as there is a wide difference betwixt sense and reason; so, betwixt their objects, visibles and invisibles, tangibles and intangibles.”

In the business world, “intangibles” can refer to intangible assets: those hard-to-pin-down but nonetheless valuable qualities such as customer goodwill or brand recognition. In the mid-20th century, as baseball brass increasingly began thinking of their players as assets to manage, “intangibles” made an easy transition from finance to sports.

The first player who was routinely praised for his “intangibles” was the scrappy second baseman Eddie Stanky, nicknamed “The Brat.” In the words of Leo Durocher, who managed Stanky with the Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Giants, “He can’t hit, can’t run, can’t field… All the little S.O.B. can do is win.”

When Stanky joined the Giants in 1950, he was keenly aware that his value to the team was hard to measure. After the season was over, the New York chapter of the Baseball Writers’ Association named Stanky the outstanding player of the year. “I want to thank you for appreciating my intangibles on the field,” he said in accepting the award.

“Intangibles” have persisted in baseball despite the advent of complex statistical analyses that seek to capture all facets of a player’s on-field talents. For stat-heads, talk of “intangibles” is a fuzzy-minded refusal to grasp empirical data. But until baseball is taken over by robots, there will always be a need to label natural gifts that elude quantification.

—Mr. Zimmer, a lexicographer, is executive producer of the Visual Thesaurus andVocabulary.com.

Paywalls are creating a knowledge aristocracy, says teen cancer pioneer Jack Andraka

Paywalls are creating a knowledge aristocracy, says teen cancer pioneer Jack Andraka

By Paul Sawers, Yesterday

Jack Andraka isn’t your typical teenager. Last year, the then 15-year-old received prizes and plaudits for his pioneering work in the early detection of pancreatic cancer – work carried out under his own steam and in his own spare time. He’s now in talks with a number of pharmaceutical companies to ensure his handiwork is made available far and wide, and at the Wired 2013 conference in London earlier today, Jack gave an impassioned and inspiring speech regaling how he battled against the naysayers to see his work through to fruition. But there’s a problem in academia, says Jack. Paywalls. Read more of this post

Alan Greenspan: What Went Wrong; The former Fed chairman on where the economy went wrong, where he went wrong—and Ayn Rand.

Alan Greenspan: What Went Wrong

The former Fed chairman on where the economy went wrong, where he went wrong—and Ayn Rand.

ALEXANDRA WOLFE

Oct. 18, 2013 6:06 p.m. ET

Alan Greenspan, the former chairman of the Federal Reserve, goes to a lot of parties. He and his wife, the TV journalist Andrea Mitchell, “sort of get invited everywhere,” he says, sitting in front of the long bay window in his office on Connecticut Avenue in Washington, D.C. Lately, though, cocktails and dinners seem to have guest lists drawn almost exclusively from one political party or the other. “It used to be a ritualistic 50-50 at parties—the doyennes of culture and partying were very strict about bipartisanship,” he adds. “That doesn’t exist anymore.” In his new book “The Map and the Territory,” to be released on Tuesday, Mr. Greenspan, 87, goes on a hunt for what has gone wrong in American politics and in the U.S. economy. He doesn’t blame the current administration for today’s partisan divide. The culprit? “It’s the benefits,” he says, pointing to the disagreements between Republicans and Democrats over how to deal with the growth of entitlements. In the book, he also ponders why the Fed failed to predict the financial crisis, where he himself went wrong and how that discovery has completely changed his worldview. Read more of this post