Since its debut in August, the “Chinese Characters Dictation Competition” has exploded in popularity. The show has touched a nerve in China, where purists complain that smartphones are eroding language skills

Chinese TV’s Latest Hit Features a Character-Driven Plot

Show Aimed at Reviving the Country’s Written Language Explodes

ISABELLA STEGER

Updated Oct. 19, 2013 12:32 a.m. ET

A hit Chinese game show is revealing a startling fact: Chinese youth are losing their writing skills. Photo: CCTV

The word “toad” would be a snap in an English-language spelling bee, but not in a nationally televised contest in China. In Chinese, toad has three characters that are made up of 46 individual strokes. Yu Shuang, a 14-year-old contestant, came close in an early round. As her teammates squealed and drew out the word in the air, Miss Yu quickly wrote the characters on a screen that projected her effort on a big display above her head. When she finished, one of three judges hit the buzzer signaling a correct answer, bringing cheers. But the other two didn’t agree, pointing out that the young girl had missed a single dot in the third character. “You were obviously very nervous just now,” said the judge, as Miss Yu’s teammates groaned in disappointment backstage. Miss Yu wasn’t alone. The show tested a group of adults in the audience, and just 30% of them could write toad correctly, state media lamented after the broadcast. “It’s a word that everyone knows,” said the Xinhua News Agency. Read more of this post

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

The Nobel Prize Is No Crystal Ball

Oct 18, 2013

The Nobel Prize Is No Crystal Ball

JASON ZWEIG

For investors, the main lesson from this week’s announcement of the Nobel Prize in economics should be humility about anyone’s market-forecasting ability—especially your own. This past Monday, the economics prize went to three researchers whose work seems to have little in common: Eugene Fama, a leading advocate of the theory that stock prices are efficient; Lars Peter Hansen, who probes predictive models for statistical weaknesses; and Robert Shiller, who argues that markets are more irrational than efficient. The Nobel committee said these economists’ findings show that “it is quite possible to foresee the broad course of [stock and bond] prices over…the next three to five years.” If only it were that simple.

Read more of this post

Burned-out fund managers show reality of City life’s “easy option”

Burned-out fund managers show reality of City life’s “easy option”

8:57am EDT

By Sinead Cruise and Tom Bill

LONDON (Reuters) – When Sanjeev Shah quit his job last month, eyebrows were raised. This wasn’t another burned-out banker: The 43-year-old was a successful fund manager running 2.8 billion pounds ($4.5 billion) for Fidelity Worldwide Investment, reaping big returns. His reasons for leaving – “This is a role that demands 110 percent effort, focus and intensity. I don’t want that level of intensity” – shed rare light on an industry often dismissed as the easy option in the world of finance. “Do we have an easy life? If you went back 25 years ago, that may have been the case but people are working significantly longer hours and are rather more professional about what they do now,” said one senior fund manager, who asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of the subject. Read more of this post

Buffett’s Son Calls Junk Bonds Model for Charities

Buffett’s Son Calls Junk Bonds Model for Charities

Howard Buffett, who runs a foundation with money from his billionaire father Warren Buffett, said high-yield debt is an inspiration for the right approach to philanthropy. Promoting economic development in an area of conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo “is a risky investment, but if that pays off, I would say it’s a little bit like we’re willing to go with junk bonds rather than AAA stocks because the payoff is big.” Howard Buffett, 58, told Bloomberg Television’s Betty Liu in an interview airing today. “We’re betting, we won’t just help people eat better, we will transform their lives.” The Howard G. Buffett Foundation works to improve the lives of the world’s most impoverished people, with a focus on providing access to food and water and ending conflicts. Warren Buffett, who has committed most of his wealth to philanthropy, including initiatives run by his three children, has also encouraged charities to take risks. “We don’t have to worry about making donors happy, we don’t have to worry about fundraising, we don’t have to worry about anything other than can we change something,” Howard Buffett said. “And to do that you absolutely have to be willing to fail. Your greatest lessons will come in failure.” Read more of this post

Speculative art: Like all passion investments, art occupies a grey area between investment and lifestyle asset, so what role can it play in a family office’s portfolio?

SPECULATIVE ART

ARTICLE | 17 OCTOBER, 2013 11:14 AM | BY JESSICA TASMAN-JONES

This summer big brand artists continued to set records at the major auction houses. But like all passion investments, art occupies a grey area between investment and lifestyle asset, so what role can it play in a family office’s portfolio?  Read more of this post

Problems with scientific research: Scientific research has changed the world. Now it needs to change itself

Problems with scientific research: Scientific research has changed the world. Now it needs to change itself

Oct 19th 2013 |From the print edition

A SIMPLE idea underpins science: “trust, but verify”. Results should always be subject to challenge from experiment. That simple but powerful idea has generated a vast body of knowledge. Since its birth in the 17th century, modern science has changed the world beyond recognition, and overwhelmingly for the better. But success can breed complacency. Modern scientists are doing too much trusting and not enough verifying—to the detriment of the whole of science, and of humanity. Read more of this post

Bishop of bling: Episcopal extravagance fuels criticism of state-financed churches

Bishop of bling: Episcopal extravagance fuels criticism of state-financed churches

Oct 19th 2013 | BERLIN |From the print edition

THE faithful of Limburg, a diocese in Hesse, have been protesting in front of their Romanesque cathedral, a few even affixing “95 theses” to its door to make their views of their bishop unmistakable. But the prelate, Franz-Peter Tebartz-van Elst, had already gone to Rome, where he awaits a meeting with Pope Francis that will determine his future. The extent of his excesses is such that it is hard to say which detail most rankles Germans, and not only Catholic ones. Read more of this post

Oshin, a poor girl who perseveres and triumphs against the odds, is said to be inspired by the story of the late Katsu Wada, the woman who founded Japanese departmental chain Yaohan, which is now defunct

Tears flow easily for new Oshin

Friday, October 18, 2013 – 09:27

Yip Wai Yee

The Straits Times

As soon as Japanese child actress Kokone Hamada appears on the webcam for her video interview with Life!, everyone in the room automatically starts cooing. The sweet-faced nine-year-old is fielding media questions over Skype about her movie Oshin, in which she plays the title role of a poor girl who perseveres and triumphs against the odds. Oshin, which openned in cinemas on thursday, is the movie remake of the iconic 1983 Japanese TV drama of the same name which was a global hit that aired in 59 countries, including Singapore. Here, it was so popular that it was dubbed in Mandarin, English and Malay. It is said to be inspired by the story of the late Katsu Wada, the woman who founded Japanese departmental chain Yaohan, which is now defunct. Read more of this post

Malcolm Gladwell Dominates Airport Bookstores

Malcolm Gladwell Dominates Airport Bookstores

By Keenan Mayo October 17, 2013

Get ready to be stuck on a plane with Malcolm Gladwell. For all of October, the best-selling author’s new book, David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants, has occupied front-and-center displays in airport terminal bookstores, those tables where a single title is stacked like Jenga blocks. “David and Goliath is being featured at the front of every store possible—both Hudson News (DUFN:SW) and Hudson Booksellers standalone stores,” says Sara Hinckley, vice president for book buying and promotions at Hudson Booksellers, the country’s largest airport chain, with locations in nearly 60 airports. Read more of this post

Norway Debates Demolishing Modern Buildings Containing Picasso Murals in Oslo; Government panel recommended tearing down buildings damaged in 2011 attack; Picasso Administration calls idea “unbelievable”

Norway Debates Demolishing Modern Buildings Containing Picasso Murals in Oslo

Government panel recommended tearing down buildings damaged in 2011 attack; Picasso Administration calls idea “unbelievable”

Pablo Picasso is shown here holding photographs of his works for Norwegian architect Erling Viksjo’s buildings in Oslow, Norway. See more images of the murals that might be destroyed. Andreas Harvik/Nasjonalmuseet

CLEMENS BOMSDORF

Oct. 17, 2013 5:32 p.m. ET

Many Norwegians never fully embraced the boxy fortresslike style of architecture known as “Brutalist” that came into vogue in the 1950s. Now, a fierce debate is under way here about whether to demolish two of this city’s signature Brutalist buildings, H and Y-block—which also happen to include four concrete murals by Pablo Picasso. Read more of this post

Finance scandal spurs German bishops to reveal secret funds; Limburg Bishop – dubbed “the luxury bishop” – has shocked the Church by admitting six-fold cost overruns on construction of his luxurious new residence, now priced at 31 million euros

Finance scandal spurs German bishops to reveal secret funds

Wed, Oct 16 2013

By Tom Heneghan, Religion Editor

PARIS (Reuters) – German Catholic bishops are scrapping centuries of secrecy and reporting the value of their private endowments as a scandal caused by a free-spending prelate puts pressure on them for more financial transparency. Limburg Bishop Franz-Peter Tebartz-van Elst – dubbed “the luxury bishop” – has shocked the Church by admitting six-fold cost overruns on construction of his luxurious new residence, which is now priced at 31 million euros, most of which will be paid from his ample reserves. Read more of this post