2013年11月21日星期四
An Unremarkable Terrorist
An Unremarkable Terrorist
A Cold War Fought by Women
John Tierney in The New York Times:
The existence of female competition may seem obvious to anyone who has been in a high-school cafeteria or a singles bar, but analyzing it has been difficult because it tends be more subtle and indirect (and a lot less violent) than the male variety. Now that researchers have been looking more closely, they say that this “intrasexual competition” is the most important factor explaining the pressures that young women feel to meet standards of sexual conduct and physical appearance. The old doubts about female competitiveness derived partly from an evolutionary analysis of the reproductive odds in ancient polygynous societies in which some men were left single because dominant males had multiple wives. So men had to compete to have a chance of reproducing, whereas virtually all women were assured of it. But even in those societies, women were not passive trophies for victorious males. They had their own incentives to compete with one another for more desirable partners and more resources for their children. And now that most people live in monogamous societies, most women face the same odds as men. In fact, they face tougher odds in some places, like the many college campuses with more women than men.
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To see how female students react to a rival, researchers brought pairs of them into a laboratory at McMaster University for what was ostensibly a discussion about female friendships. But the real experiment began when another young woman entered the room asking where to find one of the researchers. This woman had been chosen by the researchers, Tracy Vaillancourt and Aanchal Sharma, because she “embodied qualities considered attractive from an evolutionary perspective,” meaning a “low waist-to-hip ratio, clear skin, large breasts.” Sometimes, she wore a T-shirt and jeans, other times a tightfitting, low-cut blouse and short skirt. In jeans, she attracted little notice and no negative comments from the students, whose reactions were being secretly recorded during the encounter and after the woman left the room. But when she wore the other outfit, virtually all the students reacted with hostility. They stared at her, looked her up and down, rolled their eyes and sometimes showed outright anger. One asked her in disgust, “What the [expletive] is that?”
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The Insanity of Our Food Policy
Joseph E. Stiglitz in the New York Times:
American food policy has long been rife with head-scratching illogic. We spend billions every year on farm subsidies, many of which help wealthy commercial operations to plant more crops than we need. The glut depresses world crop prices, harming farmers in developing countries. Meanwhile, millions of Americans live tenuously close to hunger, which is barely kept at bay by a food stamp program that gives most beneficiaries just a little more than $4 a day.
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So it’s almost too absurd to believe that House Republicans are asking for a farm bill that would make all of these problems worse. For the putative purpose of balancing the country’s books, the measures that the House Republican caucus is pushing for in negotiations with the Senate, as Congress attempts to pass a long-stalled extension of the farm bill, would cut back the meager aid to our country’s most vulnerable and use the proceeds to continue fattening up a small number of wealthy American farmers.
The House has proposed cutting food stamp benefits by $40 billion over 10 years — that’s on top of $5 billion in cuts that already came into effect this month with the expiration of increases to the food stamp program that were included in the 2009 stimulus law. Meanwhile, House Republicans appear satisfied to allow farm subsidies, which totaled some $14.9 billion last year, to continue apace.
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reviewing jared diamond's new book
James C. Scott at The London Review of Books:
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What were our ancestors like before the domestication of plants and animals, before sedentary village life, before the earliest towns and states? That is the question Diamond sets himself to answer. In doing so, he faces nearly insurmountable obstacles. Until quite recently, archaeology recorded our history as a species in relation to the concentration of debris (middens, building rubble, traces of irrigation canals, walls, fossilised faeces etc) we left behind. Hunter-gatherers were typically mobile and spread their largely biodegradable debris widely; we don’t often find their temporary habitats, which were often in caves or beside rivers or the sea, and the vast majority of such sites have been lost to history. When we do find them, they can tell us something about their inhabitants’ diet, cooking methods, bodily adornment, trade goods, weapons, diseases, local climate and occasionally even causes of death, but not much else. How to infer from this scant evidence our ancestors’ family structure and social organisation, their patterns of co-operation and conflict, let alone their ethics and cosmology.
It is here that Diamond makes his fundamental mistake. He imagines he can triangulate his way to the deep past by assuming that contemporary hunter-gatherer societies are ‘our living ancestors’, that they show what we were like before we discovered crops, towns and government. This assumption rests on the indefensible premise that contemporary hunter-gatherer societies are survivals, museum exhibits of the way life was lived for the entirety of human history ‘until yesterday’ – preserved in amber for our examination.
more here.
Chilly lab mice skew cancer studies
Heidi Ledford in Nature:
Standard temperatures for housing laboratory mice affect the experimental results that often form the foundation for cancer-drug development. International guidelines call for laboratory mice to be kept at room temperature. Yet the rodents find that range — 20–26 °C — uncomfortably chilly, says immunologist Elizabeth Repasky of the Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Buffalo, New York. Mice, she notes, lose body heat more rapidly than humans, and, when given a choice, prefer to reside at a balmy 30 °C. At stake might be more than just creature comforts. In a study published today by Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences1, Repasky and her colleagues report that in mice housed at room temperature, tumour growth was faster than in those housed at 30 °C, and immune responses to cancer were suppressed.
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For physiologist Ajay Chawla of the University of California, San Francisco, the results cause little surprise. Mice living at room temperature have to work overtime to maintain their body temperature, and have high heart and metabolic rates, he says. “This study addresses an important issue that I think most of us have ignored,” says Chawla. “I tell my colleagues, 'You’re modelling human disease and pathology in an organism that is like somebody who is on speed'.”
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The Scientific Study of Positive Emotion
June Gruber in Edge:
What I'm really interested in is the science of human emotion. In particular, what's captivated my field and my interest the most is trying to understand positive emotions. Not only the ways in which perhaps we think they're beneficial for us or confer some sort of adaptive value, but actually the ways in which they may signal dysfunction and may not actually, in all circumstances and in all intensities, be good for us.
I thought I'd first start briefly with a tale of positive emotion. It's a really interesting state because in many ways it's one of the most powerful things that evolution has built for us. If we look at early writings of Charles Darwin, he prominently features these feelings of love, admiration, laughter. So early on we see observations of them, and have some sense that they're really critical for our survival, but when you look at the subsequent scientific study of emotion, it lagged far behind. Indeed, most of the research in human emotion really began with studying negative emotions, trying to build taxonomies, understand cognitive appraisals, physiological signatures, and things like anger, and fear, and disgust. For good reason, we wanted to understand human suffering and hopefully try to ameliorate it.
More here.
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2013年11月20日星期三
生活的滋味
黛安娜王妃说，她小时候，妈妈常对她说：“只有精神空虚无聊的人，才会感到烦闷无聊。”（Only boring people get bored）。在很多地方，家长都是这样教导孩子的。希望能激发他们的自立精神，充实内在资源，建立自给自足的精神力量。
不过新加坡是个例外，这里有许多家长，他们喊闷，似乎喊得比他们的孩子更大声。相信这是因为这里流行“受害者心态”。凡个人的问题，大都被认为是环境造成的。他们之所以会感到烦闷，当然是因为新加坡是个无趣的地方。
我的一位喜欢花草树木的朋友有个大问题，他申诉说，他的女友对大自然似乎不太感兴趣，每次带她去植物园或乌敏岛这一些枝叶茂密花红草绿的所在，她总是显得烦厌，嚷着要回家。他问我，怎样才能让她看到他看到的美。其实，我早就遇到这个问题，曾经一度，我一有空就提着相机穿街走巷，希望把我看到的美拍出来，说服那些认为新加坡不美的新加坡人。
人生也是一样，这大千世界就像一个收藏丰富的美术馆，一些访客流连忘返，另一些却烦闷不堪。其关键之处，在于个人的艺术涵养，所以有“生活的艺术”之说。
如果不想浪费生命，真的要好好想一想这个切身问题。
从人生意义的角度看，这是一个躲不了的问题。人类的一个不能不面对的挑战，是意义：他必须对自己交代，他的人生的意义是什么。
对这个问题的回应至少有两个层面：
一、头脑的回应，用语言表达。这类思维一般比较抽象，如意识形态，价值与文化认同，以及宗教信仰。
二、生活的回应，实践性的，不一定要说出来。重要的是，他以怎样的态度，怎样的情绪度过每一天。或套句现在流行的说法，他是怎样“活在每个当下”。
真正的回应当然是第二种。生活是无可回避的。每一个人必须以整个人，整个身心来生活，来过每一天。如果他们觉得生活无味而空虚，那就是说他们的回应失败了。如果他们活的有滋有味，生气勃勃，可知道他们的回应是成功的。这和社会地位、学识或物质成就没有关系，他可以是国家领袖、亿万富豪、学者教授，也可以是阿富汗山区里的一个牧羊人。这也和生活的节奏没有关系，可以热闹紧张，也可以静美缓慢。
真正活得满意的人不多，换言之，能真正回应生命的挑战的人不多。大部分人只能做出第一种回应，那就是用各式各样的道理来说服自己；或拥抱意识形态，或皈依宗教信仰，或认同文化/族群身份（我是中国人、日本人、龙的传人、大和子民、上帝的选民），从中得到某种归属感、意义与安慰。为了使自己相信这就是生命的意义，这类信仰者往往带有某种狂热的气味。仿佛这信仰是他们在生存的汪洋中，紧紧拉住的一条从救生艇上丢下来的救命绳索。
这不是说，那些已做出生活上回应的人就不必回应头脑的质问。通常，这样的回应是以一种和他们生活素质有机契合的方式表达的。不论他们的信仰名目如何不同，其内容实质总不离一些正面积极的价值观念与生活规范，如知足常乐、谦虚感恩、爱邻如己、己所不欲互施于人之类。故事尽管不同，基调却相当一致。这就好像我们经常看到的，各种宗教的得道圣徒，不论他们是基督徒、回教徒、佛教徒、或者是道教徒，他们的基本教诲往往出奇的相似。
一些思维辨证能力比较逊色的人，或者会给出一些逻辑不甚通畅，口齿不清的答案。但是我们知道，这些语言的表达，对他们来说，已经不重要了，因为他们已经用他们的生活回应了这个挑战。
有位朋友近来回新，他是个专业人士，是个在世界很多地方都可以谋生的、幸运的世界公民。他以前常抱怨新加坡没有文化，是个文化沙漠，所以就去了纽约。在那里生活了五六年后，觉得纽约的生活节奏太快，于是搬到新西兰。近来回来看看，说新西兰商机不旺，死气沉沉，正在考虑迁回新加坡。前几天，我问他现在觉得新加坡怎样。他很文艺地说，他不喜欢人造的东西，而新加坡尽是人造物，连树木都好像是假的，所以觉得闷。我们是老朋友，习惯抬杠，于是我不客气地指出，他以前说新加坡没有文化，而文化（甚至整个文明）正是人造的。现在这里的文化节目多得令人应接不暇，他却说不喜欢人造的文化了。我还夸张地问，他是不是连整个人类文明都要抛弃？
不过新加坡是个例外，这里有许多家长，他们喊闷，似乎喊得比他们的孩子更大声。相信这是因为这里流行“受害者心态”。凡个人的问题，大都被认为是环境造成的。他们之所以会感到烦闷，当然是因为新加坡是个无趣的地方。
我的一位喜欢花草树木的朋友有个大问题，他申诉说，他的女友对大自然似乎不太感兴趣，每次带她去植物园或乌敏岛这一些枝叶茂密花红草绿的所在，她总是显得烦厌，嚷着要回家。他问我，怎样才能让她看到他看到的美。其实，我早就遇到这个问题，曾经一度，我一有空就提着相机穿街走巷，希望把我看到的美拍出来，说服那些认为新加坡不美的新加坡人。
人生也是一样，这大千世界就像一个收藏丰富的美术馆，一些访客流连忘返，另一些却烦闷不堪。其关键之处，在于个人的艺术涵养，所以有“生活的艺术”之说。
如果不想浪费生命，真的要好好想一想这个切身问题。
从人生意义的角度看，这是一个躲不了的问题。人类的一个不能不面对的挑战，是意义：他必须对自己交代，他的人生的意义是什么。
对这个问题的回应至少有两个层面：
一、头脑的回应，用语言表达。这类思维一般比较抽象，如意识形态，价值与文化认同，以及宗教信仰。
二、生活的回应，实践性的，不一定要说出来。重要的是，他以怎样的态度，怎样的情绪度过每一天。或套句现在流行的说法，他是怎样“活在每个当下”。
真正的回应当然是第二种。生活是无可回避的。每一个人必须以整个人，整个身心来生活，来过每一天。如果他们觉得生活无味而空虚，那就是说他们的回应失败了。如果他们活的有滋有味，生气勃勃，可知道他们的回应是成功的。这和社会地位、学识或物质成就没有关系，他可以是国家领袖、亿万富豪、学者教授，也可以是阿富汗山区里的一个牧羊人。这也和生活的节奏没有关系，可以热闹紧张，也可以静美缓慢。
真正活得满意的人不多，换言之，能真正回应生命的挑战的人不多。大部分人只能做出第一种回应，那就是用各式各样的道理来说服自己；或拥抱意识形态，或皈依宗教信仰，或认同文化/族群身份（我是中国人、日本人、龙的传人、大和子民、上帝的选民），从中得到某种归属感、意义与安慰。为了使自己相信这就是生命的意义，这类信仰者往往带有某种狂热的气味。仿佛这信仰是他们在生存的汪洋中，紧紧拉住的一条从救生艇上丢下来的救命绳索。
这不是说，那些已做出生活上回应的人就不必回应头脑的质问。通常，这样的回应是以一种和他们生活素质有机契合的方式表达的。不论他们的信仰名目如何不同，其内容实质总不离一些正面积极的价值观念与生活规范，如知足常乐、谦虚感恩、爱邻如己、己所不欲互施于人之类。故事尽管不同，基调却相当一致。这就好像我们经常看到的，各种宗教的得道圣徒，不论他们是基督徒、回教徒、佛教徒、或者是道教徒，他们的基本教诲往往出奇的相似。
一些思维辨证能力比较逊色的人，或者会给出一些逻辑不甚通畅，口齿不清的答案。但是我们知道，这些语言的表达，对他们来说，已经不重要了，因为他们已经用他们的生活回应了这个挑战。
有位朋友近来回新，他是个专业人士，是个在世界很多地方都可以谋生的、幸运的世界公民。他以前常抱怨新加坡没有文化，是个文化沙漠，所以就去了纽约。在那里生活了五六年后，觉得纽约的生活节奏太快，于是搬到新西兰。近来回来看看，说新西兰商机不旺，死气沉沉，正在考虑迁回新加坡。前几天，我问他现在觉得新加坡怎样。他很文艺地说，他不喜欢人造的东西，而新加坡尽是人造物，连树木都好像是假的，所以觉得闷。我们是老朋友，习惯抬杠，于是我不客气地指出，他以前说新加坡没有文化，而文化（甚至整个文明）正是人造的。现在这里的文化节目多得令人应接不暇，他却说不喜欢人造的文化了。我还夸张地问，他是不是连整个人类文明都要抛弃？
| 其实，我更想告诉他的，还是黛安娜王妃母亲那句话“只有精神空虚无聊的人，才会感到烦闷无聊”，不过 总说不出口。他有两个孩子，我只希望他不会把这种负面的生活态度传染给他们。要不然，在人生旅途刚 起步，就被指向一个自败的方向，肯定不是件好事。 谈到这里，或许有人会问，那些善于生活的人，他们的秘密是什么？ 社会心理分析学家埃里希·弗罗姆（Erich Fromm）曾经探讨过“生活的艺术”这个问题。他的结论是，“生 活的艺术”是一种能力。只有一个有健全人格的人，才有能力成就一个健全充实的人生。他进而指出，培 养健全人格需要正确的价值观与道德规范。其实，东西方的智慧传统都早有这样的洞见。亞里斯多德认为 美德是幸福的要件；孔子也说过“仁者不忧”。 |
2013年11月14日星期四
Something Very Big Is Coming
Stephen Wolfram in his Blog:
Computational knowledge. Symbolic programming. Algorithm automation. Dynamic interactivity. Natural language. Computable documents. The cloud. Connected devices. Symbolic ontology. Algorithm discovery. These are all things we’ve been energetically working on—mostly for years—in the context of Wolfram|Alpha, Mathematica, CDF and so on.
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But recently something amazing has happened. We’ve figured out how to take all these threads, and all the technology we’ve built, to create something at a whole different level. The power of what is emerging continues to surprise me. But already I think it’s clear that it’s going to be profoundly important in the technological world, and beyond. At some level it’s a vast unified web of technology that builds on what we’ve created over the past quarter century. At some level it’s an intellectual structure that actualizes a new computational view of the world. And at some level it’s a practical system and framework that’s going to be a fount of incredibly useful new services and products. I have to admit I didn’t entirely see it coming. For years I have gradually understood more and more about what the paradigms we’ve created make possible. But what snuck up on me is a breathtaking new level of unification—that lets one begin to see that all the things we’ve achieved in the past 25+ years are just steps on a path to something much bigger and more important.
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The Trouble With Democracy
The Trouble With Democracy
How The Brain Creates Personality: A New Theory
How The Brain Creates Personality: A New Theory
More And Better Nuclear Power
More And Better Nuclear Power
Screen Shot 2013-11-12 at 12.19.20
Despite Fukushima, nuclear power is coming back. China is adding 32 reactors, Russia 10, India seven. Nuclear stations generate large blocks of power without producing carbon dioxide — and they don’t have to be dangerous. The current industry standard, the light-water reactor using solid uranium fuel, is a “terrible mistake” in engineering terms. Liquid thorium fuel is cheap, plentiful, and far less toxic (Metered paywall
Screen Shot 2013-11-12 at 12.19.20
Despite Fukushima, nuclear power is coming back. China is adding 32 reactors, Russia 10, India seven. Nuclear stations generate large blocks of power without producing carbon dioxide — and they don’t have to be dangerous. The current industry standard, the light-water reactor using solid uranium fuel, is a “terrible mistake” in engineering terms. Liquid thorium fuel is cheap, plentiful, and far less toxic (Metered paywall
Washing Machines For Dirty Money
Washing Machines For Dirty Money
克鲁格曼：下调法国信用评级是政治阴谋
克鲁格曼：下调法国信用评级是政治阴谋
标准普尔下调法国信用评级反映了欧美崇尚紧缩的政治氛围。法国的赤字大幅降低，生产力高于德国，降级是冲着法国高收税高福利的政策。
专题：三中全会与中国改革
媒体札记：累觉不爱 
FT中文网专栏作家徐达内：官方媒体加入三中全会解读潮，宣传机器全力开动强调决心，市场化媒体则跟进具体领域，但股市的下跌与宣传高潮形成鲜明对比。
“勿对中国土地改革期望过高”
中共十八届三中全会呼吁建立“城乡统一的建设用地市场”，并“赋予农民更多财产权利”，但一些中国专家警告称，不能对三中全会的土地改革抱有太多的期待。
中国开启“六位一体”改革
中国东方证券首席经济学家邵宇：三中全会对全面深化改革做了“六位一体”的总体布局。这将开启一个全新的进步时代，要给市场以人的价值，而不是给人以市场价值。
“非常政治”下的改革需要权威
中国天则研究所秋风：中央改革领导小组和国家安全委员会的设立，引发对集权的担忧。但在“非常政治”状态下的中国，要重建制度，改革机构必需部分处于法律之外。
2013年11月6日星期三
You Can't Learn About Morality from Brain Scans
Thomas Nagel in TNR:
Joshua Greene... asks how our moral beliefs and attitudes should be affected by these psychological findings. Greene began his training and research as a doctoral student in philosophy, so he is familiar from the inside with the enterprise of ethical theory conceived not as a part of empirical psychology but as a direct first-order investigation of moral questions, and a quest for systematic answers to them. His book is intended as a radical challenge to the assumptions of that philosophical enterprise. It benefits from his familiarity with the field, even if his grasp of the views that he discusses is not always accurate.
The book is framed as the search for a solution to a global problem that cannot be solved by the kinds of moral standards that command intuitive assent and work well within particular communities. Greene calls this problem the “tragedy of commonsense morality.” In a nutshell, it is the tragedy that moralities that help members of particular communities to cooperate peacefully do not foster a comparable harmony among members of different communities.
Morality evolved to enable cooperation, but this conclusion comes with an important caveat. Biologically speaking, humans were designed for cooperation, but only with some people. Our moral brains evolved for cooperation within groups, and perhaps only within the context of personal relationships. Our moral brains did not evolve for cooperation between groups (at least not all groups).... As with the evolution of faster carnivores, competition is essential for the evolution of cooperation.
The tragedy of commonsense morality is conceived by analogy with the familiar tragedy of the commons, to which commonsense morality does provide a solution. In the tragedy of the commons, the pursuit of private self-interest leads a collection of individuals to a result that is contrary to the interest of all of them (like over-grazing the commons or over-fishing the ocean). If they learn to limit their individual self-interest by agreeing to follow certain rules and sticking to them, the commons will not be destroyed and they will all do well. As Greene puts it, commonsense morality requires that we sometimes put Us ahead of Me; but the same disposition also leads us to put Us ahead of Them.
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改革就是改变游戏规则
改革就是改变游戏规则
香港经纶国际经济研究院肖耿：中共十八届三中全会之所以引起全球关注，就是因为中国已是世界第二大经济体，同时也是最有活力、潜力及不确定性的大国。中国改革的核心就是改掉导致租值耗散的坏制度，而非革命。
克鲁格曼：共和党为什么向穷人宣战
最近，共和党人、俄亥俄州长约翰·卡西奇(John Kasich)做了些让人意外的事情。首先，他绕过自己党派控制的州议会，去推动扩大联邦医疗补助(Medicaid)计划的覆盖范围——这项计划由联邦政府出资，是奥巴马医改(Obamacare)的重要组成部分。之后，在为自己的行为辩解的时候，他又对自己的政治同盟毫不留情，声称，“我关心这样一个事实，即有人像是要对穷人开战。他们说，如果你处于贫穷状态，那么你肯定是没志气，又懒惰。”
2013年11月4日星期一
2013年11月2日星期六
Economics as a Moral Science
For a while I have been working on a paper on democracy, expert knowledge, and economics as a moral science. [The financial crisis plays a role in the motivation of the paper, but the arguments I’m advancing turn out to be only contingently related to the crisis]. One thing I argue is that, given its direct and indirect influence on policy making and for reasons of democratic accountability, economics should become much more aware of the values it (implicitly or explicitly) endorses. Those values are embedded in some of the basis concepts used but also in some of the assumptions in the theory-building.
The textbook example in the philosophy of economics literature to illustrate the insufficiently acknowledged value-ladenness of economics is the notion of Pareto efficiency, also known as ‘the Pareto criterion’. Yet time and time again (for me most recently two days ago at a seminar in Oxford) I encounter economists (scholars or students) who fail to see why endorsing Pareto efficiency is not value-neutral, or why there are good reasons why one would not endorse the Pareto-criterion. Here’s an example in print of a very influential economist: Gregory Mankiw.
In his infamous paper‘Defending the One Percent’ Mankiw writes (p. 22):
In his infamous paper‘Defending the One Percent’ Mankiw writes (p. 22):
“Discussion of inequality necessarily involves our social and political values, but if inequality also entails inefficiency, those normative judgements are more easily agreed upon. The Pareto-criterion is the clearest case: if we can make some people better off without making anyone worse off, who could possibly object?”
Yet the Pareto-criterion is not as uncontroversial as Mankiw believes. The Pareto-criterion compares two social states, A and B, and makes a claim about whether the act/policy/social change that brings us from A to B is desirable or not. If in B all individuals have at least the same welfare/utility/wellbeing than in A, and at least one of them has a higher level, then moving from A to B is a Pareto-improvement, and the Pareto-criterion recommends the move from A to B on grounds of efficiency.
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China U.
Marshall Sahlins in The Nation:
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We were sitting in his office, Ted Foss and I, on the third floor of Judd Hall at the University of Chicago. Foss is the associate director of the Center for East Asian Studies, a classic area studies program that gathers under its roof specialists in various disciplines who work on China, Korea and Japan. Above us, on the fourth floor, were the offices and seminar room of the university’s Confucius Institute, which opened its doors in 2010. A Confucius Institute is an academic unit that provides accredited instruction in Chinese language and culture and sponsors a variety of extracurricular activities, including art exhibitions, lectures, conferences, film screenings and celebrations of Chinese festivals; at Chicago and a number of other schools, it also funds the research projects of local faculty members on Chinese subjects. I asked Foss if Chicago’s CI had ever organized lectures or conferences on issues controversial in China, such as Tibetan independence or the political status of Taiwan. Gesturing to a far wall, he said, “I can put up a picture of the Dalai Lama in this office. But on the fourth floor, we wouldn’t do that.”
The reason is that the Confucius Institutes at the University of Chicago and elsewhere are subsidized and supervised by the government of the People’s Republic of China. The CI program was launched by the PRC in 2004, and there are now some 400 institutes worldwide as well as an outreach program consisting of nearly 600 “Confucius classrooms” in secondary and elementary schools. In some respects, such a government-funded educational and cultural initiative is nothing new. For more than sixty years, Germany has relied on the Goethe-Institut to foster the teaching of German around the globe. But whereas the Goethe-Institut, like the British Council and the Alliance Française, is a stand-alone institution situated outside university precincts, a Confucius Institute exists as a virtually autonomous unit within the regular curriculum of the host school—for example, providing accredited courses in Chinese language in the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago.
There’s another big difference: CIs are managed by a foreign government, and accordingly are responsive to its politics.
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The Great Forgetting
The Great Forgetting
Girl With A Pearl Earring
Girl With A Pearl Earring
Q&A: Brian Eno
Q&A: Brian Eno
2013 FT中国高峰论坛
茅于轼：期待三中全会能让真话更多 
85岁的经济学家茅于轼在FT年度中国论坛上说：我希望中共的政权能够保持下去，这对中国人民有好处，但怎么能稳定下去？我觉得要逐渐恢复历史真相，创造一个说真话没有风险的环境。
“李克强经济学”再解读 
作为2013年财经界最热的名词，“李克强经济学”引发多种诠释。FT 2013中国论坛邀请华生、张军等知名经济学家，再度审视李克强经济学的核心理念和操作前景。
跨国企业审视在华经营新挑战 
2013年跨国公司在华经营挑战加剧。在FT 2013年度中国论坛上，来自微软、亚马逊、飞利浦等跨国公司的在华高管，共同探讨中国新监管和舆情环境下跨国公司的应对之道。
网络安全“需要国家合作” 
中国的网络安全程度如何？各国能否在信息安全上独善其身？互联网的使用者应该怎样保护自己？参加FT中文网2013年度高峰论坛的商界、政府和学界代表各抒己见。
2013 FT高峰论坛关注中国经济突围
新领导人上任、新政策开局，2013年的中国酝酿诸多变化。由FT中文网主办的2013年度FT中国高峰论坛邀请多位著名经济学家和企业家，就十八届三中全会、“李克强经济学”、上海自贸区等影响中国进程的年度热点作深度探讨。
「天地俠影」被拘，罪在質疑上市公司？
「天地俠影」被拘，罪在質疑上市公司？
《紐約時報》北京分社 08:19
中國股民汪煒華因在互聯網上公開質疑上市公司廣匯能源有財務欺詐以及操縱股價之嫌，而被新疆警方「跨省刑拘」。此案引發公眾對股民監督上市公司權利與禁區的討論
2013年11月1日星期五
Science’s rightful place is in service of society
Daniel Sarewitz in Nature:
Amid the mess of US politics — a pointless government shut-down, across-the-board cuts, endless partisan squabbling — now is a good moment to take stock of the fate of publicly funded science. After all, five years ago next week Barack Obama was first elected president, promising that he would “restore science to its rightful place” in US society. How has he done? Pretty well — and the ongoing budget crisis might be the most important reason. When there is no new money to throw at science, the only way to improve its social value is to tighten how the old money is spent. And science policies under Obama are beginning to add up to a strategy to correct the greatest weakness of the US research enterprise: the isolation of the conduct of science from its use in society.
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In biomedicine, the doubling of the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) budget between 1998 and 2003 did not reduce the stunningly high failure rates and costs of drug development. To confront this problem, the Obama administration created the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS), which was approved by Congress in December 2011. Central to NCATS’ vision, says NIH director Francis Collins, are partnerships between “government, academia, philanthropy, patient advocates, and biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies to overcome translational roadblocks and offer solutions to detect, treat and prevent disease”. Despite forecasts of doom, basic science in the United States stands preeminent, as shown by the ongoing harvest of Nobel prizes. But where is the pay-off for the rest of society? The bankruptcy of Detroit in Michigan, once the world auto-industry capital, underscores the need for new science-based technology sectors to create jobs for millions of people, yet it also makes apparent the lack of connection between scientific excellence and economic well-being. To help close this gap, the Obama administration last year created the National Additive Manufacturing Institute. Focused on three-dimensional printing, it is located in the ‘rust belt’ city of Youngstown, Ohio, and was launched with a US$30-million government contribution matched by corporate funds. In May, the president announced three more manufacturing institutes, each to be “a regional hub designed to bridge the gap between basic research and product development, bringing together companies, universities and community colleges, and federal agencies to co-invest in technology areas”.
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John Kay: Economics In The Real World
John Kay: Economics In The Real World
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