Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address a powerful second act : author

Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address a powerful second act : author

Mon, Nov 18 2013

By Jeffrey B. Roth

GETTYSBURG, Pennsylvania (Reuters) – As Americans on Tuesday mark the 150th anniversary of the Gettysburg Address, which remains one of the best-known pieces of political oratory in the nation’s history, many will likely overlook one small but important detail. Neither President Abraham Lincoln nor his listeners regarded the 272-word tribute to the soldiers who died at the pivotal battle of the U.S. Civil War, famously beginning “Four score and seven years ago,” as the main event on November 19, 1863. Read more of this post

Leonardo Da Vinci’s wacky piano is heard for the first time, after 500 years

Leonardo Da Vinci’s wacky piano is heard for the first time, after 500 years

November 19, 2013 – 11:30AM

Take a bow: The viola organista’s strings are played in the same way as a cello. Photo: Tomasz Wiech/AFP

A bizarre instrument combining a piano and cello has finally been played to an audience more than 500 years after it was dreamt up Leonardo da Vinci. Da Vinci, the Italian Renaissance genius who painted the Mona Lisa, invented the ‘‘viola organista’’ – which looks like a baby grand piano – but never built it, experts say. The viola organista has now come to life, thanks to a Polish concert pianist with a flair for instrument-making and the patience and passion to interpret da Vinci’s plans. Read more of this post

Kasparov on India’s Importance to Chess

November 18, 2013, 4:50 PM

Kasparov on India’s Importance to Chess

By Sriram Balasubramanian

Viswanathan Anand, the Indian World Chess Champion and Magnus Carlsen, the current World Number One chess player, are battling it out at the World Chess Championships in Chennai southern India. The score in games stands at 4-2 in favor of Carlsen, who won the two most recent confrontations. The first four games of the championship were drawn. There are six more games to go — including Monday’s game — and the first player to reach 6.5 points will be crowned the new World Chess Champion. Carlsen was once trained by former World Chess Champion, Russian Garry Kasparov. Kasparov, who is now a Russian pro-democracy leader and global human-rights activist, is regarded as one of the greatest players chess has ever seen. He was World Chess Champion for 15 years between 1985 and 2000 in the classical format and retired from the game in March 2005 as the world’s highest rated chess player. He holds the record for the longest time as the Number One rated player in the world, a title he held between 1986 and 2005. Beyond the chess world, he is a political activist in Russia, ran as a candidate in the last Russian Presidential elections, and is a board member of the New York-based Human Rights Foundation and chairman of its international council. He is running to become president of FIDE, the world governing chess body, in 2014 and was in India for part of this year’s championship. In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, he spoke about the championships, the growth of chess in India, the country’s democratic history and the legacy of Viswanathan Anand Edited excerpts: Read more of this post

It’s the root of all evil, after all ; Doctors and lawyers are especially prone to it but everyone is at risk from money addiction

Jingling pockets could bring on a headache

November 20, 2013

David Wilson

Money, money, money – how much do you dwell on the stuff? Excessive desire for money robs people of their humanity, according to the famously frugal Pope, who recently suspended a ”bling bishop” for alleged lavish spending. Addiction to money is widespread, according to personal finance expert Jim Miller. Sufferers rashly prioritise money over options they value more: time with family, exploring their true passions, even having a family, Miller says. Spurred by the belief that money fixes all worries, in their acquisitive zeal they ”stomp on their passions and values”, he says, adding that doctors and lawyers are especially prone to money addiction. Read more of this post

If You’re Going to Change Your Culture, Do It Quickly

If You’re Going to Change Your Culture, Do It Quickly

by Brad Power  |   8:00 AM November 18, 2013

Culture change is a bear. The conventional wisdom is that it takes years to change a culture, defined as the assumed beliefs and norms that govern “the way we do things around here.” And few organizations explicitly use culture as a way to drive business performance, or even believe it could make sense to do so. The logic usually works the other way — make specific changes in processes, and then hope that, gradually, the culture will change. Read more of this post

How to protect yourself from ‘prediction addiction’; “Prediction addiction” is hard-wired into our brains. The most successful investors resist it

How to protect yourself from ‘prediction addiction’

Comment: “Prediction addiction” is hard-wired into our brains. The most successful investors resist it, says Tom Stevenson

By Tom Stevenson

11:43AM GMT 18 Nov 2013

In a few weeks’ time a Christmas tradition as familiar as brandy butter and tinsel will kick off: the annual round of market predictions. It’s a bit of fun and in a year’s time no one will remember anyone’s forecasts. This is just as well because the one really predictable thing is that most of them will turn out to be horribly wrong. Read more of this post

How an Ontario family firm moved beyond making screen door grilles

How an Ontario family firm moved beyond making screen door grilles

Mary Teresa Bitti | 18/11/13 1:27 PM ET

ALMAG Aluminum is celebrating 60 years in business. No easy feat for the Brampton, Ont.-based company considering the province’s manufacturing industry is still recovering from the economic collapse of 2008. Still, the one-time maker of decorative aluminum door grilles used the downturn to create a new strategic growth plan that allowed it to break into the U.S. market and set itself apart as a can-do company ready to take on challenges its competitors won’t. In a wide-ranging interview, second-generation president and CEO Bob Peacock explains the new strategy, what it means for ALMAG and how being a family-owned and operated business has led to the company’s longevity. Here is an edited version of that conversation. Read more of this post

Economics explains our world – but economics degrees don’t; The curriculum is increasingly remote from what the experts now know

November 17, 2013 7:46 pm

Economics explains our world – but economics degrees don’t

By Wendy Carlin

The curriculum is increasingly remote from what the experts now know, says Wendy Carlin

This could be a golden age for economics. Recent advances in theory, economic history and quantitative methods have provided tools to address pressing issues of inequality of opportunity, financial instability and climate change. At airport bookshops, Freakonomics, Why Nations Fail and Irrational Exuberance compete with John Grisham’s latest. Students flock to introductory courses. Read more of this post

Doing successful business in China isn’t about culture

Michael Bleby Reporter

Doing successful business in China isn’t about culture

Published 19 November 2013 10:29, Updated 19 November 2013 13:05

It doesn’t take much to throw a spanner in the works of Chinese negotiations. Just ask Ben Hammond. The chief executive of ASX-listed Centrex Metals – which has sealed three joint-venture deals with Chinese partners to mine iron ore and base metals in South Australia and NSW – has run into plenty of those hurdles. One, he says, is translation errors. Read more of this post

Cyclones and climate change: The new normal? Physics suggests that storms will get worse as the planet warms. But it is too early to tell if it is actually happening

Cyclones and climate change: The new normal? Physics suggests that storms will get worse as the planet warms. But it is too early to tell if it is actually happening

Nov 16th 2013 |From the print edition

WAS typhoon Haiyan the strongest recorded storm to make landfall? Meteorologists will never know. Reliable records go back only a few decades. But it is surely one of them. Besides the devastation and the death toll, one way to assess its potency is to compare it with Katrina, the hurricane that devastated New Orleans in 2005. At its most intense, Haiyan’s peak wind speeds were probably greater than 300kph (190mph). The best estimate for Katrina, when it hit land, is around 200kph. Read more of this post

Cottage industries: Why so many Britons are working from home, and where

Cottage industries: Why so many Britons are working from home, and where

Nov 9th 2013 |From the print edition

IN THEIR medieval heyday places such as Moreton-in-Marsh, a market town in the Cotswolds, hummed with the sound of spinning wheels in household workshops. War and industrialisation killed off that home-grown industry. But now other ones are growing. Read more of this post

Coldblooded Does Not Mean Stupid; Recent research revealing that reptiles’ brains are less primitive than previously thought could offer new insights on cognitive evolution

November 18, 2013

Coldblooded Does Not Mean Stupid

By EMILY ANTHES

Humans have no exclusive claim on intelligence. Across the animal kingdom, all sorts of creatures have performed impressive intellectual feats. A bonobo named Kanzi uses an array of symbols to communicate with humans. Chaser the border collieknows the English words for more than 1,000 objects. Crows make sophisticated tools, elephants recognize themselves in the mirror, and dolphins have a rudimentary number sense. Read more of this post

CFOs Should Step in as Strategic HR Leaders

November 07, 2013

CFOs Should Step in as Strategic HR Leaders

Finance chiefs of growth companies need to direct human resources strategy, says a leading consultant.

• Robert Sher

Although it falls outside their traditional job description, CFOs of growth companies must often play the role of human resources strategist. The responsibilities related to HR — managing performance, designing the leadership team for the next stage of growth and creating clear objectives for all employees — are just as important as having sufficient liquidity. Read more of this post

Case study: How to keep the energy when your growing company starts moving beyond the mid-market

Case study: How to keep the energy when your growing company starts moving beyond the mid-market

Published 18 November 2013 10:08, Updated 18 November 2013 10:09

Brendan Swift

Tom Roche, managing director of SNP Security, says the company excels at embracing technological changes. Photo: Rob Homer

When it comes to security services, SNP Security has its market covered: security officers, mobile patrols, alarm response, disaster-proof monitoring and electronic security form just part of its offering. Read more of this post

Bill Gates Can’t Build a Toilet: High-tech $1,000 bathroom gadgets won’t help the world’s poor

November 18, 2013

Bill Gates Can’t Build a Toilet

By JASON KASS

IN addition to eradicating polio in India and starting the personal computer revolution, the Seattle Superman of our age has managed to make going to the bathroom a cause célèbre. Five years ago, if I’d told people I worked on toilets, they would have surely assumed I was a plumber. Now, they exclaim: “Oh! Isn’t Bill Gates into that?” More than one-third of the world’s population, approximately 2.5 billion people, doesn’t have access to a toilet. The Gates Foundation and a handful of celebrities like Matt Damon deserve credit for putting this sanitation crisis on the map. Read more of this post

Belgian telco chief fired for comparing PM to ‘small child asking when Santa’s coming’

Belgian telco chief fired for comparing PM to ‘small child asking when Santa’s coming’

Jones Hayden and John Martens, Bloomberg News | 18/11/13 10:18 AM ET

Belgacom SA installed interim leadership and began a search for a new chief executive officer after Didier Bellens was fired over comments he made about Prime Minister Elio Di Rupo and the phone company’s dividends. The carrier yesterday put Chairman Stefaan De Clerck and Chief Financial Officer Ray Stewart in charge temporarily while the board comes up with a shortlist of CEO candidates with the help of a headhunter. The roster will go to the government, which owns 53.5% of Belgacom, for a decision. Read more of this post

Bacardi Campaign Focuses on Resilience, Rather Than Rum; A new advertising campaign chronicles the tumult Bacardi has weathered since it was introduced in Cuba in 1862

November 17, 2013

Bacardi Campaign Focuses on Resilience, Rather Than Rum

By ANDREW ADAM NEWMAN

IT is the time of the year when Bacardi typically promotes its recipe for holiday punch, but a new advertising campaign is instead promoting how the rum brand rolls with the punches. The global campaign, “Untameable,” highlights the tumult that Bacardi has faced since its introduction in Cuba in 1862, like a fire in 1880, Prohibition beginning in 1920 in the United States, an earthquake in 1932 that destroyed facilities and the revolutionary government led by Fidel Castro that seized Bacardi’s Cuban assets in 1960. Read more of this post

A Fish With an International Reputation

A Fish With an International Reputation

By Grace Susetyo on 4:00 pm November 18, 2013.
One thing many people don’t realize Norway and Indonesia have in common is their ties to the sea. Both countries are proud of their seafood. Though perhaps Indonesia has more to learn from Norway in using seafood as a tool for worldwide culinary influence, diplomacy and economic cooperation. In order to promote Norwegian seafood and its cultural-economic agenda in Indonesia, the Royal Norwegian Embassy hosted a Norwegian Salmon Sushi Gathering and a Norwegian Seafood Dinner on Thursday. Read more of this post

“Virtue is bold and goodness never fearful – and march into a world where destiny awaits them with open arms”

E50 celebrates entrepreneurs

Published: 2013/11/18

ENTERPRISE 50 (E50) Award returned with a bang to recognise a new breed of high-potential SMEs. We all have read about the global giants – Microsoft and Apple Inc – who are not just living testimonies to the American era of SME development, but speak of the many companies that rose from backyard garages to great global markets.  Infosys Technologies, which started in 1981 with a capital of US$250 (RM800), today has a market capitalisation of more than US$30 billion and is listed on the American Stock Exchange. In Malaysia, one may be surprised to know that we do have many such high-potential SMEs who, with the support of our progressive SME policies and master plan, are on track to go global.  Read more of this post

You’re So Self-Controlling; Is our sense of time, not our lack of willpower, the real issue?

November 16, 2013

You’re So Self-Controlling

By MARIA KONNIKOVA

WHAT do you do if, when you get to a subway platform, you see that it is already packed with people? Do you join the throngs to wait for the train, or do you shake your head and seek an alternative way to get where you’re going? If you go the first route, you probably think that the crowd means there must not have been a train for some time and that one is imminent. If you choose the second, you’ve come to the opposite conclusion: It’s crowded, a train hasn’t come in a while, so it’s likely there’s some sort of problem — and who knows how long you’ll end up waiting. Better cut your losses and split. Read more of this post

Real Men Go to Sleep

Real Men Go to Sleep

by Alan Derickson  |   8:00 AM November 11, 2013

The two largest time commitments for most adults on this planet — sleep and work — too often make uneasy bedfellows. The proliferation of nonstandard work schedules and, for many, the outright abandonment of schedules have made traditional daytime-weekday patterns less common. Approximately one in five American workers now functions under some variety of nonstandard schedule. Meanwhile, about half of the nation’s night-shift workers sleep six hours or less per day. The demands of other unconventional arrangements, such as multiple job-holding and independent contracting, have also contributed to the sleep deprivation that plagues much of the workforce. Read more of this post

What Do Investigative Reporters Do? Exposing truly scandalous conduct can often involve hard digging – in dark holes of digital data and even piles of litter from conference meetings

11.16.2013 13:19

What Do Investigative Reporters Do?

Exposing truly scandalous conduct can often involve hard digging – in dark holes of digital data and even piles of litter from conference meetings

By staff reporter Wang Xiaoqing

With the recent Chen Yongzhou scandal, many have called for an “investigation” into the investigative reporting business. I apply the term investigative reporters to those that often wade into the deeper, uncharted waters in the media terrain. I have a hard time thinking of myself as an investigative reporter and I’ve always felt like a more appropriate description would be a reporter that investigates cases from time to time. The first of my investigations was the Wenzhou high-speed train crash. Read more of this post

Burned once, angel takes on investments with caution

Burned once, angel takes on investments with caution

Armina Ligaya | 17/11/13 7:00 AM ET
Parm Gill can be forgiven for being incredibly particular about the projects he chooses as an angel investor. Why am I willing to jump in on pitches that others often snub? Here are eight principles I follow that can help increase the quality and quantity of angel investing opportunities in Canada. The Ottawa-based entrepreneur was forced to file for bankruptcy with his first startup, an Internet service provider called Cyberus Online. In 1999, he sold Cyberus to Dallas-based online computer manufacturer Eisa.com. But he soon discovered that Eisa.com had falsifed its financial statements during the sale process, and was swimming in debt. Read more of this post

What, me worry? How blind optimism benefits startup founders

What, me worry? How blind optimism benefits startup founders

BY HAYDEN WILLIAMS 
ON NOVEMBER 17, 2013

Building a startup is an emotional roller coaster. Look no further than Paul Graham’s startup curve. If you take as a given the parabolic trajectory, how does a founder handle the ups and more importantly the downs? I’ve developed a systematic strategy that has worked wonders in keeping me upbeat. What’s more, I’ve stumbled across research that shows I might not be (altogether) delusional. Read more of this post

Why We Still Talk About JFK; Peggy Noonan’s thoughts on the 50th anniversary of Kennedy’s assassination

November 16, 2013, 7:12 PM

Why We Still Talk About JFK

I am on my way from Los Angeles to Dallas, where tomorrow I will appear on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” which will come live out of the Texas Schoolbook Depository. I can’t believe I’ll be inside that place, from which, 50 years ago next week, at a corner window on the sixth floor, Lee Harvey Oswald fired the shots that killed John F. Kennedy. One of the questions we’ll discuss: Why do we still talk about JFK? From my show notes: Read more of this post

76-year-old Yusnor Ef, the grandfather of Malay songs in Southeast Asia: “I always tell the youngsters that if they want to make music that lasts, it has to come from here,” he said, pointing to his heart. “You must be committed to your work.”

Yusnor Ef Waxes Eloquent on Life and Love

By Katrin Figge on 12:56 pm November 16, 2013.

The grandfather of Malay songs talks about love’s influence on his music. (Photo courtesy of Yusnor Ef)

Dubbed the grandfather of Malay songs in Southeast Asia, 76-year-old Yusnor Ef can look back at an illustrious career. Born Mohamed Noor Mohamed Yusofe, Yusnor grew up in Singapore as the son a single mother and discovered his love for the theater in the 1950s. However, it was the combination of music and words that would eventually become his true calling. Read more of this post

How to Be a Writer: Hemingway’s Advice to Aspiring Authors

How to Be a Writer: Hemingway’s Advice to Aspiring Authors

Ernest Hemingway has contributed a great deal to the collected advice of great writers, from his famous admonition against the dangers of ego to his short and stellar Nobel Prize acceptance speech. But some of his finest wisdom springs to life in this excerpt from his 1967 nonfiction piece By-Line, found in the altogether excellent Hemingway on Writing (public library) – a compilation of the celebrated author’s most insightful meditations on the craft, culled from his published works and his private letters. Writing as “Your Correspondent,” abbreviated to “Y.C.,” Hemingway addresses the archetypal aspiring author, nicknamed “Mice,” and offers this characteristically wise-in-a-no-bullshit-way advice on becoming a writer: Read more of this post

The Smarter You Are, The Stupider You Are

The Smarter You Are, The Stupider You Are

by ALVA NOË

November 01, 2013 1:13 PM

Education is necessary if democracy is to flourish. What good is the free flow of information if people can’t make sense of it? How can you vote your own interests if you don’t understand the consequences of policy choices? How can you know what’s best for you or your community? A recent study by Yale’s Dan M. Kahan and colleagues might be thought to call these truisms of democratic political culture into question. According to the finding, the better you are at reasoning numerically, the more likely you are to let your political bias skew your quantitative reasoning. Read more of this post