The high cost of dirty fuels

This article deals with the high cost of dirty fuels. Why should countries end subsidies for fossil fuels: It would save millions of lives. The climate would also benefit by reducing greenhouse gases. There is no good reason for governments to sustain outdated and unnecessary subsidies that cause millions of deaths every year, not to mention the havoc that they are wreaking on the environment.

Read an excerpt of the article:

A new report from the International Monetary Fund makes a compelling case for why countries should end subsidies for fossil fuels: It would save millions of lives. Governments subsidize energy in many ways. Some countries sell gasoline and diesel at prices lower than the cost of producing or importing those fuels. But by far the biggest way countries reduce the price of energy is by not taxing it enough to account for the damage that burning fossil fuels causes to human health and to the climate. ...read more

Should There Be a Minimum Age for Writing a Memoir?

This article written by Leslie Jamison, he talks about Jonathan Yardley’s review of ‘Epilogue’. The question of the hour is : should there be a minimum age for writing a memoir? Yardley doesn't feel the need to have yet another memoir by a person too young to have undergone any such experiences.  What age gains in remove it loses in immediacy: The younger version of a story gets told at closer proximity, with more fine-grain texture and less aerial perspective. Jamison believes in all these versions of a story.

Read an excerpt of the article written by Leslie Jamison:

It seems silly to pretend that nothing meaningful happens to the young. Last fall, I read a piece in The Washington Post that I haven’t been able to shake. It was Jonathan Yardley’s review of ‘‘Epilogue,’’ a memoir by a 34-year-old writer named Will Boast about the experience of losing everyone in his family before the age of 25. Yardley’s string of angry observations — Boast couldn’t stop feeling sorry for himself! ...read more

A start-up that makes loans based on customers’ devotion

This article by Stacy Cowley introduces ZipCap, fledgling start-up in San Diego with a new lending model it calls ‘‘loyalty capital.’ its first guinea pig was Beezy’s Cafe. The aim is to offer small retailers like restaurants, boutiques and service providers access to low-interest loans financed by investors with a vested interest in supporting a local economy. To be eligible for loans, companies must have been in business for at least two years in the same location and must enroll at least 100 Inner Circle members. ‘‘When a customer feels as though they have contributed to the success of a business, they have a greater bond to that business and are more compelled to visit.’’ ZipCap’s unusual lending model, Mr. Malter said.

Read an excerpt of the article written by Stacy Cowley:

To the residents of Ypsilanti, Mich., Beezy’s Cafe looks like a thriving business. The six-year-old restaurant and coffeehouse draws crowds for breakfast and lunch, employs 16 people, has a trail of glowing Yelp reviews for its ‘‘hippy vibe’’ and ‘‘super friendly’’ staff, and recently extended its hours to serve dinner on Fridays and Saturdays. But to banks, it’s a risky venture with little appeal. Beezy’s is only intermittently profitable, and most of the cash it generates goes straight back into keeping it running. Bee Roll, the cafe’s founder and owner, has no collateral to offer for a loan or credit line: She rents her home and leases the restaurant’s space and some of its equipment. ...read more

Sikh lives shaped by violence

This article written by Manohla Dargis introduces the movie - The Fourth Direction - based on The Director, Gulvinder Singh’s memories of the political crisis and assaults faced by The Sikhs before Indira Gandhi’s assassination, in India. The Fourth Director is Gulvinder Singh’s second film, but first feature at The Cannes. His mentor was Mani Kaul. In an interview, he talks about how he discovered Bresson.

Read an excerpt of the article written by Manohla Dargis:

This year’s cinematic menagerie at the 68th Cannes Film Festival includes a monstrously large flea in ‘‘Tale of Tales,’’ bloody bunnies in ‘‘The Lobster’’ and flocks of sheep in ‘‘Rams.’’ No animal, though, has held the screen as proudly as the Himalayan sheepdog Tommy in ‘‘The Fourth Direction’’ (‘‘Chauthi Koot’’), a movie about ordinary people whose lives are shaped by violence in Punjab, the predominantly Sikh state in northern India. Directed by Gurvinder Singh, the movie takes place in 1984, the year Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was assassinated by two Sikh bodyguards. ‘‘The Fourth Direction’’ doesn’t directly address the political crises surrounding that assassination, including, before Gandhi’s death, the Indian military’s assault on Sikh separatists who had taken over the Golden Temple of Amritsar (Sikhism’s holiest shrine), or the anti-Sikh riots after her death that led to the slaughter of thousands. Instead, Mr. Singh tells a fictional tale that opens with two Hindu men running and closes with them walking together with several newfound Sikh confederates in a quietly moving assertion of Indian unity. ...read more

How do we increase empathy?

In this article, author Nicholas Kristof writes about the meaning of empathy. There’s also some research suggesting that wealth may impede empathy. The wealthiest 20 percent of Americans give significantly less to charity as a fraction of income (1.4 percent) than the poorest 20 percent do (3.5 percent), according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data. One study finds that drivers of luxury cars are more likely to cut off other motorists and ignore pedestrians at a crosswalk. Likewise, heart rates of wealthier research subjects are less affected when they watch a video of children with cancer. The author concludes by encouraging her readers to remember that compassion and rationality are not effete markers of weakness, but signs of civilization. 

Read an excerpt of the article written by Nicholas Kristof:

In my last column, I wrote about a high school buddy, Kevin Green, a warm and helpful man who floundered in a tough job market, hurt his back and died at the age of 54. The column was a call for empathy for those who are struggling, but, predictably, scolds complained that Kevin’s problems were of his own making. Grrrr. So what do we know about empathy and how to nurture it? First, it seems hard-wired. Even laboratory rats will sometimes free a trapped companion before munching on a food treat. ‘‘Probably the biggest empathy generator is cuteness: paedomorphic features such as large eyes, a large head, and a small lower face,’’ Steven Pinker, the Harvard psychologist, tells me. ‘‘Professional empathy entrepreneurs have long known this, of course, which is why so many charities feature photos of children and why so many conservation organizations feature pandas. Prettier children are more likely to be adopted, and baby-faced defendants get lighter sentences.’’ Not much we can do about looks — although criminal defense lawyers try, by having scruffy clients shave and dress up before appearing in court. There’s also some research suggesting that wealth may impede empathy. One study by psychologists at the University of California at Berkeley finds that drivers of luxury cars are more likely to cut off other motorists and ignore pedestrians at a crosswalk. Likewise, heart rates of wealthier research subjects are less affected when they watch a video of children with cancer. Granted, skepticism is reasonable any time (mostly liberal) academics reach conclusions that portray the wealthy in a poor light. But these experiments also find a measure of backing in the real world. For example, among Democratic politicians, personal wealth is a predictor of supporting legislation that would increase inequality, according to a journal article last year by Michael W. Kraus and Bennett Callaghan. Likewise, the wealthiest 20 percent of Americans give significantly less to charity as a fraction of income (1.4 percent) than the poorest 20 percent do (3.5 percent), according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data. That may be partly because affluence insulates us from need, so that disadvantage becomes theoretical and remote rather than a person in front of us. ...read more

Conquering the rules of grammar

In the article, Kit Eaton deals with the problem of making grammatical mistakes. learning grammar is easier than ever, with the right apps like Practice English Grammar, Learn English Grammar, Grammar and Practice for Business from HarperCollins and Grammar Up from Webrich Software etc. For testing your grammatical skills on Android devices, one can take The English Grammar Test, among other apps. Kit Eaton feels that these apps are quite helpful.

Read an excerpt of the article written by Kit Eaton:

I’m going to be very careful writing this week’s column. I’m trying not to make any grammatical mistakes. Even though I’ve published millions of words, I’m certain some errors will slip through, because we’re all guilty of making grammatical mistakes from time to time. But learning grammar is easier than ever now — with the right apps, of course. And they are not just for people learning English; they’re also good for those of us who already speak it. The free app Practice English Grammar from Cleverlize is among the most polished and is easy to use for improving your grammar skills. It’s available for both iOS and Android and covers the whole gamut of grammatical details like conjunctions, tenses and using the passive voice. Its main interface is a pleasing graphical display of your progress in each of the various modules. Tapping on one of these modules takes you to a section where you can see the grammar lessons in the form of flashcards and then to a section where you can test your knowledge in an interactive quiz. The flashcards are easy to read, with the bare minimum of information you need to know. For example, did you know that the present continuous tense is formed with the help of the auxiliary verb ‘‘to be’’? Still, while the flashcards are easy to read, sometimes the information feels a little too spartan. The app is clean and professional with few frills, and I liked its no-nonsense style. I even learned a thing or two while reviewing it. But it can get costly. While the core app is free with basic lessons, you have to purchase more content in-app if you want access to every module. Individual modules cost $1, or you can subscribe for around $10 a month. Another option is the LearnEnglish Grammar app from the British Council. This app, too, has lessons covering different subjects and has sections to review and test your knowledge. ...read more

Advocates push guns as tactic to fight rape on campus

The article written by Alan Schwarz presents an ambivalent view on a extremely heated topic of discussion : should arms be allowed on college campuses... While 41 states have banned the carrying of concealed firearms on campus by law, some advocates feel that lifting this ban could curb the growing rate of sexual assault. However, others feel this could also be a threat due to the increasing rates of alcohol consumption by college students, making students a lot more reckless. 

Read an excerpt of the article written by ALAN SCHWARZ:

As gun rights advocates push to legalize firearms on college campuses, an argument is taking shape: Arming female students will help reduce sexual assaults. Support for so-called campus-carry laws had been hard to muster despite efforts by proponents to argue that armed students and faculty members could prevent mass shootings like the one at Virginia Tech in 2007. The carrying of concealed firearms on college campuses is banned in 41 states by law or by university policy. Carrying guns openly is generally not permitted. But this year, lawmakers in 10 states who are pushing bills that would permit the carrying of firearms on campus are hoping that the national spotlight on sexual assault will help them win passage of their measures. ‘‘If you’ve got a person that’s raped because you wouldn’t let them carry a firearm to defend themselves, I think you’re responsible,’’ State Representative Dennis K. Baxley of Florida said during debate in a House subcommittee last month. The bill passed. The sponsor of a bill in Nevada, Assemblywoman Michele Fiore, said in a telephone interview: ‘‘If these young, hot little girls on campus have a firearm, I wonder how many men will want to assault them. The sexual assaults that are occurring would go down once these sexual predators get a bullet in their head.’’ In addition to those in Florida and Nevada, bills that would allow guns on campus have been introduced in Indiana, Montana, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas and Wyoming. Opponents say that university campuses should remain havens from the gun-related risks that exist elsewhere, and that college students, with high rates of binge drinking and other recklessness, would be particularly prone to gun accidents. And some experts in sexual assault said that college women were typically assaulted by someone they knew, sometimes a friend, so even if they had access to their gun, they would rarely be tempted to use it. ‘‘It reflects a misunderstanding of sexual assaults in general,’’ said John D. Foubert, an Oklahoma State University professor and national president of One in Four, which provides educational programs on sexual assault to college campuses. ‘‘If you have a rape situation, usually it starts with some sort of consensual behavior, and by the time it switches to nonconsensual, it would be nearly impossible to run for a gun. Maybe if it’s someone who raped you before and is coming back, it theoretically could help them feel more secure.’’ Other objectors to the bills say that advocates of the campus-carry laws, predominantly Republicans with well-established pro-gun stances, are merely exploiting a hot-button issue. ‘‘The gun lobby has seized on this tactic, this subject of sexual assault,’’ said Andy Pelosi, the executive director of the Campaign to Keep Guns Off Campus. ‘‘It resonates with lawmakers.’’ Colorado, Wisconsin and seven other states allow people with legal carry permits to take concealed firearms to campus, some with restrictions. Many of those states once had bans but lifted them in recently, suggesting some momentum for efforts in 2015. ...read more

Obama heads to Silicon Valley security talks amid tensions

DAVID E. SANGER AND NICOLE PERLROTH explore the future of encryption technology, and its relationship with the government. He writes about the advancements in technology at big tech companies like Google and Apple, and how they deal with cybersecurity issues in an increasingly dangerous world. The government, however, is steadfastly anti-encryption, since it prevents them from being able to gain access to the private lives of their citizens, a hallmark of the modern American government. This beef extends to telecommunications, with the government demanding access to people’s personal phone calls at any time. Large companies are focused on encryption strong enough to prevent incidents at stores like Target, when large scale thefts of credit card numbers have occurred in the past. The government however, is unlikely to back down. Magana examines what this means for you and me, and for technology as a whole.

Read an excerpt of the article written by DAVID E. SANGER AND NICOLE PERLROTH: 

President Obama was to meet here on Friday with the nation’s top technologists on a host of cybersecurity issues and the threats posed by hackers. But nowhere on the agenda is the real issue for the chief executives and tech company officials who will gather on the Stanford campus: the growing estrangement between Silicon Valley and the government. The long history of quiet cooperation between Washington and America’s top technology companies — first to win the Cold War, then to combat terrorism — was founded on the assumption of mutual interest. But the Obama administration’s efforts to prevent companies from greatly strengthening encryption in commercial products like the iPhone and Google’s email services has shattered that assumption. And there is continuing tension over the government’s desire to stockpile flaws in software — known as zero days — for future use against adversaries. ‘‘What has struck me is the enormous degree of hostility between Silicon Valley and the government,’’ said Herb Lin, who spent 20 years working on cyberissues at the National Academy of Sciences before moving to Stanford several months ago. ‘‘The relationship has been poisoned, and it’s not going to recover anytime soon.’’ Mr. Obama’s cybersecurity coordinator, Michael Daniel, concedes there are tensions. American firms, he says, are concerned about international competitiveness, and that means making a very public show of their efforts to defeat American intelligence-gathering by installing newer, harder-to-break encryption systems and demonstrating their distance from the United States government. The F.B.I., the intelligence agencies and David Cameron, the British prime minister, have all tried to stop Google, Apple and other companies from using technology that the firms themselves cannot break into — meaning they cannot turn over emails or pictures, even if served with a court order. The firms have vociferously opposed government requests for such information as an intrusion on the privacy of their customers and a risk to their businesses. ‘‘In some cases that is driving them to resistance to Washington,’’ Mr. Daniel said in an interview. ‘‘But it’s not that simple. In other cases, with what’s going on in China,’’ where Beijing is insisting that companies turn over the software that is their lifeblood, ‘‘they are very interested in getting Washington’s help.’’ Mr. Daniel’s reference was to Silicon Valley’s argument that keeping a key to unlocking terrorist and kidnappers’ secret communications, as the government wants them to do, may sound reasonable in theory, but in fact would create an opening for others. It would also create a precedent that the Chinese, among others, could adopt to ensure they can get into American communications, especially as companies like Alibaba, the Chinese Internet giant, become a larger force in the American market. ‘‘A stupid approach,’’ is the assessment of one technology executive who will be seeing Mr. Obama on Friday, and who asked to speak anonymously. That tension — between companies’ insistence that they cannot install ‘‘back doors’’ or provide ‘‘keys’’ giving access to law enforcement or intelligence agencies and their desire for Washington’s protection from foreign nations seeking to exploit those same products — will be the subtext of the meeting. That is hardly the only point of contention. ...Read more

One Republic of Learning

ARMAND MARIE LEROI tackles the question of stagnation in the humanities. When universities trim their budgets, it is inevitably the humanities that are hit first and often the worst. This lack of funding leads to a certain type of stagnation in the fields. But he notes a new field that has recently come up to counter this – the digitization of classical texts. Choski then explores the ins and outs of this new technology and what it means for scholars. For one, it means putting mathematical analysis into humanities texts. What that means for literary critics and the like, whose anecdotal evidence is usually accepted at face value, is an unfortunate, and some would argue unnecessary, reality check. This mathematical analysis could even extend to art, Choski explains, using Rothko as an example.

Read an excerpt of the article written by Armand Marie Leroi:

In the Republic of Learning humanities scholars often see themselves as second-class citizens. Their plaintive cries are not without cause. When universities trim budgets it is often their departments that take the hit. In the last 10 years, however, there has been one bright spot: the ‘‘digital humanities,’’ a vast enterprise that aims to digitize our cultural heritage, put it online for all to see, and do so with a scholarly punctilio that Google does not. The digital humanities have captured the imaginations of funders and university administrators. They are being built by a new breed of scholar able to both investigate Cicero’s use of the word ‘‘lascivium’’ and code in Python. If you want to read Cicero’s letter in which lascivium appears, or the lyrics of 140,000 Dutch folk songs, now you can. Texts are living things: Digitization transforms them from caterpillars into butterflies. But the true promise of digitization is not just better websites. Rather, it is the transformation of the humanities into science. By ‘‘science’’ I mean using numbers to test hypotheses. Numbers are the signature of science; they allow us to describe patterns and relationships with a precision that words do not. The quantification of the humanities is driven by an inexorable logic: Digitization breeds numbers; numbers demand statistics. The new breed of digital humanists is mining and visualizing data with the facility that bioinformaticians analyze genomes and cosmologists classify galaxies. All of them could, if they cared to, understand each others’ results perfectly well. Most traditional — analog — humanists, I suspect, delight in the new databases but do not fully grasp their consequences. One great literary critic did so years ago. ‘‘What,’’ asked Harold Bloom in 1973, ‘‘is Poetic Influence anyway? Can the study of it really be anything more than the wearisome industry of source-hunting, of allusion-counting, an industry that will soon touch apocalypse anyway when it passes from scholars to computers?’’ Bloom’s apocalypse arrived in 2012 when a group of mathematicians analyzed the pattern of stylistic influences in more than 7,700 texts. Just the year before, Bloom published ‘‘The Anatomy of Influence,’’ his swan song. Less a work of rational criticism than a testament of personal aesthetic faith, its claims are immune to quantitative tests, or indeed tests of any kind. ‘‘I am an Epicurean literary critic, reliant upon sensations, perceptions, impressions,’’ he wrote. But scientists know that impressions lie; that they tell us what we want to hear, not what is. It’s easy to see how it will go. A traditional, analog, scholar will make some claim about the origin, fate or significance of some word, image, trope or theme in some Great Work. He’ll support it with apt quotations, and fillet the canon for more of the same. His evidence will be the sort that natural scientists call ‘‘anecdotal’’ — but that won’t worry him since he’s not doing science. But then a code-capable graduate student will download the texts — not just the canon, but a thousand more — run the algorithms, produce the graphs, estimate the p values, and show the claim to be false, if false it indeed is. There will be no rejoinder; the analog scholar won’t even know how to read the results. Quantification has triumphed in field after field of the natural and social sciences. It will here, too. Science, however, is not just about measurement. Science offers theories — of a particular kind. The French poet Paul Valéry said that a ‘‘work of art becomes a machine intended to excite and combine the individual formations’’ of our minds. Yes, but how does the machine work? A comparison with biology shows what’s missing. To explain organic diversity, biologists have built a theory of evolution whose major tenets are couched in math and generally agreed. To explain cultural diversity, the humanities have offered only a succession of incommensurable interpretive fashions and uncountable particular studies, many of which, to be sure, enrich our understanding of this writer or that, but which only add texture to the tapestry of culture and do nothing to explain its whole. There is an explanatory vacuum. Some scholars think that it will be filled by something resembling the theory of organic evolution. I think they’re right. But it will also draw elements from epidemiology, cognitive psychology and behavioral economics. Whatever it looks like, we can be sure of one thing: It will be expressed not in words, but equations. If the rudiments of a new cultural science are visible, so are its limits. ...read more

When the growth model fails

In this rather metaphysical piece, Daniel Cohen grapples with the constant search for economic growth. He suggests we, as a population, “set aside greed and fear” and invest in the economy without worry. Unfortunately, he notes that most of us are driven by capitalism into a constant need for a higher salary. The environment of constant competition produces the inaccessibility of contentment. Wealth hoarding by the rich, and constant worry about the future by the poor means hardly anyone invests in our economy, leading to stangnation. Cohen also tackles the question of labour in am increasingly mechanized world. He observes that unhappy workers don’t invest in economy, and thus, the happiness of workers is essential to economic growth.

Read an excerpt of the article written by Daniel Cohen:

PARIS — Economic growth is the religion of the modern world, the elixir that eases the pain of conflicts, the promise of indefinite progress. It is the solution to our perennial worries about not getting what we don’t have. And yet, at least in the West, the growth model is now as fleeting as Proust’s Albertine Simonet: Coming and going, with busts following booms and booms following busts, while an ideal world of steady, inclusive, long-lasting growth fades away. In the United States, 80 percent of the population has seen no growth in purchasing power over the last 30 years. In France, annual per capita growth has dropped steadily from 3 percent in the 1970s to less than zero in 2013. In the interim, the political class has been flummoxed by stagnation, a hesitation that has opened the doors to populists of various stripes. But in its desperate search for scapegoats, the West skirts the key question: What would happen if our quest for never-ending economic growth has become a mirage? Would we find a suitable replacement for the system, or sink into despair and violence? John Maynard Keynes, writing at the outset of the economic crisis of the 1930s, warned against misdiagnosing the situation. In his famous article ‘‘Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren,’’ he declared that a period of exceptional prosperity was at hand and that the world’s ‘‘economic problem’’ would soon be resolved — just as, in the preceding century, strong growth and food safety arrived on a wave of technical innovation. To wring all we can out of the economic growth model, he said, the world must set aside greed and fear, outdated characteristics of a bygone era of misery. Instead, we must learn to enjoy ourselves — and above all to consume, without restraint and without worrying about tomorrow. Ultimately, Keynes believed that we would end up working only three hours a day and after turn to the truly important tasks of art, culture and religion. Sadly, such metaphysical pursuits have not come to be the world’s priority at this point in history; instead, we still live in fear of poverty, inequality and joblessness. The perpetual quest for material wealth remains our primary goal, despite the fact that we in the West are six times richer than we were in the 1930s. Thus it must be said that Keynes, an intellectual giant of economics, erred: The vast accumulation of wealth hasn’t at all satisfied or moderated the appetites of our materialist society. The so-called Easterlin paradox helps explain Keynes’s mistake. According to the economist Richard Easterlin, wealth does not correlate to happiness. A higher salary is obviously always desirable, yet once we’ve reached that target it is never enough: We fall victim to a process of habituation of which we are largely unaware. Similarly, as we each set goals for ourselves driven by our current desires, we fail to take into account how our desires change over time and in new circumstances. This explains why economic growth, more than pure wealth, is the key to the functioning of our society: It provides each of us with the hope that we can rise above our present condition, even though this dream remains ever elusive. Which brings us to the fundamental question: Will economic growth return, and if it doesn’t, what then? Experts are sharply divided. The pessimists, led by the economist Robert Gordon, believe that the potential for economic growth is now much lower than in the last century. The new industrial revolution may have given us the smartphone, but that hardly compares, in his thinking, to the great advances of the 20th century: electricity, the automobile, the airplane, movies, television, antibiotics. On the other hand, optimists like Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee tell us in their book ‘‘The Second Machine Age’’ that Moore’s Law is going to allow ‘‘the digitization of just about everything.’’ Already, Google is experimenting with driverless cars, and robots are caring for the elderly in Japan: Another burst of growth appears to be at hand. To decide who is right, one must first recognize that the two camps aren’t focusing on the same things: For the pessimists, it’s the consumer who counts; for the optimists, it’s the machines. ...Read more

Being Chinese in Singapore

Tash Aw's article explores the meaning of diaspora for Chinese in Singapore. The similarities between China and Singapore and undeniable - 75% singaporeans are ethnically Chinese, and they share religions like Confucianism, Buddhism and Daoism. Moreover, the ethnically Chinese in Singapore appear to be economically and often culturally dominant over other ethnicities. Yet, even though there is a distinctly Chinese personality to Singapore, the same Chinese are now distancing themselves from the mainland. Kim attempts to explain why.

Read an excerpt of the article written by TASH AW:

Festooned with red lanterns and banners bearing auspicious messages, the ornate façade of the 19th-century Thian Hock Keng temple in downtown Singapore seems even more flamboyant than usual. The temple is readying itself for its busiest time of the year: Over the next few weeks thousands of worshipers will make offerings and pray for a favorable Chinese New Year. It’s a time when even the least conscientious of temple-goers, like me, make an effort to maintain the customs that link them to their heritage. Such a classically Chinese setting may seem an unlikely place to start questioning one’s traditions, but to be in Singapore today means to challenge conventional ideas of Chineseness. As China rises on the world stage, it is exporting its notions of Chinese culture and ethnicity, creating new tensions within Chinese communities abroad. In Singapore, Chinese people used to be called zhongguo ren or hua ren interchangeably: The small distinction between the two terms — the former relating to people with Chinese nationality or born in China; the latter to anyone ethnically and culturally Chinese — was considered artificial. But subtle divisions of this kind have now become the crux of what it means to be Chinese here. Three-quarters of Singapore’s people are ethnically Chinese, most descendants of Hokkien-speaking immigrants from Fujian Province in southern China who came to the island in the first half of the 19th century, when it was a British settlement. Malays and Indians, both indigenous and immigrants who also arrived in the 19th century, have long formed important communities in the territory. But it is the predominance of the ethnic Chinese that was crucial to Singapore’s formation in the first place. In 1965, Singapore broke off from freshly independent Malaysia as a direct result of bitter disputes over the preservation of rights for ethnic Chinese and other minorities in the new Malay-dominated nation. (The two territories previously were part of a loose federation.) Today, this tiny Chinese enclave has a G.D.P. per capita about five times that of its far larger, resource-rich neighbor. But it is precisely this upward economic trajectory that has begun to raise questions about what it means to be Chinese in modern Singapore. In 2013, the government published a white paper that laid down plans for sustaining economic growth and increasing the population from about 5.3 million to 6.5 to 6.9 million by 2030. In an already densely populated island with limited space for new construction, the plan sparked widespread debate and unprecedented public protests: Given Singapore’s low birth rate, this increase in numbers would have to be fueled by immigrants — largely, it was presumed by many, from China. On the face of it, few cultural mergers could be more seamless. Singapore’s multilingual educational system treats Mandarin as a de facto second language after English. Almost half a century ago, the country adopted the simplified system of writing Chinese that is used in mainland China, rather than the complex forms from Hong Kong and Taiwan. ...read more

A photojournalist’s memoir of deadly close-ups

Scott Anderson writes a review of a photojounalist’s memoir of deadly close-ups. The book, A Photographer’s Life of Love and War by Lynsey Addario tackles the experiences of photojournalists on the battlefield, especially with the added pressure of being a woman in what is wrongly considered a man’s field. She writes about her time in Libya and her capture by qaddafi’s forces, and the hell that followed. She also gives the read a brief history of her life leading to this dangerous occupation, and her experiences in living as an afghan woman in disguise.

Read an excerpt of the article written by Lynsey Addario:

The modern battlefield can induce a peculiar strain of skewed logic among those sent to chronicle it. Upon a landscape where it is often mortally dangerous simply to stand in one place, how much worse can it be to venture a little farther, to get a bit closer? And having assumed the added risk of getting closer, how then to leave before you’ve taken the perfect image, conducted one last interview? What makes such calculations especially tricky is that most modern battlefields have no recognizable boundaries or rules of conduct; they bear less resemblance to any traditional war movie than, say, to ‘‘Mad Max.’’ In the opening of her affecting memoir, ‘‘It’s What I Do,’’ the photojournalist Lynsey Addario provides a harrowing account of just where such moth-to-the-flame thinking can lead. In March 2011, Ms. Addario was in Libya covering the civil war when she, along with a local driver and three other journalists on assignment with The New York Times, ventured into the exposed front-line town of Ajdabiya. (Although we have both covered conflicts for The Times, I have never worked with Ms. Addario, and we are only passing acquaintances.) Ms. Addario had feelings of foreboding from the outset, fears that amplified amid reports that loyalists to Muammar el-Qaddafi were encircling the town. Working against this, though, was the call of her profession. ‘‘We are greedy by nature,’’ she notes of war photographers and reporters. ‘‘We always want more than what we have. The consensus in the car at that point was to keep working.’’ As the only woman in that car, Ms. Addario felt further pressure to keep her concerns to herself. ‘‘I didn’t want to be the cowardly photographer or the terrified girl who prevented the men from doing their work.’’ When at last the group decided it was time to get out, it was too late: Captured by Col. Qaddafi’s soldiers, the four journalists were bound and blindfolded and taken away; their driver was dead, summarily executed or killed in the crossfire. What ensued over the next several days was a horrifying ordeal, as the journalists were paraded through loyalist towns, to be punched and hit with rifle butts — and in Ms. Addario’s case, sexually groped — by soldiers and the crowd. In the most unforgettably ghastly moment, Ms. Addario remembers how one of the captors caressed her face and hair ‘‘like a lover,’’ while softly ‘‘repeating the same phrase over and over.’’ She assumed the man was trying to comfort her, until an Arabic-speaking fellow captive told her the truth: ‘‘He’s telling you that you will die tonight.’’ Eventually transferred into the far gentler custody of the Libyan Foreign Ministry, the journalists were ultimately released and flown out of the country. ...read more

Medicine just for you

In this article, the author explores a new field of medical study – personalized medicine, which is tailor made to the patient’s needs. It takes into account the patient’s medical history, genetic history and sometimes even as much as the sequence of the patient’s genome. Medical professionals seek advice from patients, bioethicists, civil libertarians in order to find the best way to fulfill this while taking care of the matter of privacy. The author fears that the advent of this new technology would lead to a significant rise in healthcare costs. In a country where a simple illness can often be a death sentence due to the exorbitant cost of treatment, this does not bode well. Yet, the author feels that the pros outweigh the cons, and that such research should be expedited at any rate.

Read an excerpt of the article written by the Editorial Board:

President Obama’s new budget contains a farsighted proposal that could ultimately transform the practice of American medicine. The proposal seeks to design treatments for the individual, which are sometimes called ‘‘personalized medicine’’ or ‘‘precision medicine’’ to distinguish them from the one-size-tries-to-fit-all approach. For example, about 4 percent of all cystic fibrosis cases are caused by a particular mutation in one gene. The disease clogs the lungs with thick mucus; a drug that targets the mutation lets patients breathe easily. Drugs have also been used to treat a number of cancers that stem from genetic defects, including an aggressive form of breast cancer. This new way of looking at diseases is not limited to genes but examines environmental factors as well. Federal officials say researchers plan to collect data on a person’s diet, exercise, smoking history, exposure to toxins and populations of micro-organisms in and on the body. They will be seeking medical records, laboratory test results, medication histories and even physiological monitoring by mobile phones. The White House will seek advice from patients, bioethicists, civil libertarians and others on how to do this while preserving patient privacy. ... read more

The Opposite of Loneliness Essays and Stories

The poignant article by Marina Keegan, “The Opposite of Loneliness” deals with the author’s fears and hopes on graduating from college. She fears getting lost in the modern web, and losing the safety that college provides, both physically and mentally. But she also look back to what all her experiences in college have taught her, and decides to use them to quell her fears going into years ahead. Her first and unfortunately last book (author now deceased) of the same title deals with similar themes. 

Read an excerpt of the article written by Marina Keegan:

The Opposite of Loneliness We don’t have a word for the opposite of loneliness, but if we did, I could say that’s what I want in life. What I’m grateful and thankful to have found at Yale, and what I’m scared of losing when we wake up tomorrow after Commencement and leave this place. It’s not quite love and it’s not quite community; it’s just this feeling that there are people, an abundance of people, who are in this together. Who are on your team. When the check is paid and you stay at the table. When it’s four A.M. and no one goes to bed. That night with the guitar. That night we can’t remember. That time we did, we went, we saw, we laughed, we felt. The hats. Yale is full of tiny circles we pull around ourselves. A cappella groups, sports teams, houses, societies, clubs. These tiny groups that make us feel loved and safe and part of something even on our loneliest nights when we stumble home to our computers—partnerless, tired, awake. We won’t have those next year. We won’t live on the same block as all our friends. We won’t have a bunch of group texts. This scares me. More than finding the right job or city or spouse, I’m scared of losing this web we’re in. This elusive, indefinable, opposite of loneliness. This feeling I feel right now. But let us get one thing straight: the best years of our lives are not behind us. They’re part of us and they are set for repetition as we grow up and move to New York and away from New York and wish we did or didn’t live in New York. I plan on having parties when I’m thirty. I plan on having fun when I’m old. Any notion of THE BEST years comes from clichéd “should have . . . ,” “if I’d . . . ,” “wish I’d . . .” Of course, there are things we wish we’d done: our readings, that boy across the hall. We’re our own hardest critics and it’s easy to let ourselves down. Sleeping too late. Procrastinating. Cutting corners. More than once I’ve looked back on my high school self and thought: how did I do that? How did I work so hard? Our private insecurities follow us and will always follow us. But the thing is, we’re all like that. Nobody wakes up when they want to. Nobody did all of their reading (except maybe the crazy people who win the prizes . . .). We have these impossibly high standards and we’ll probably never live up to our perfect fantasies of our future selves. But I feel like that’s okay. We’re so young. We’re so young. We’re twenty-two years old. We have so much time. There’s this sentiment I sometimes sense, creeping in our collective conscious as we lie alone after a party, or pack up our books when we give in and go out—that it is somehow too late. That others are somehow ahead. More accomplished, more specialized. More on the path to somehow saving the world, somehow creating or inventing or improving. .... 

How Elementary School Teachers’ Biases Can Discourage Girls From Math and Science

This article written by Claire Cain Miller on the unconscious biases of elementary level teachers tackles a question almost everyone thinks of and no one asks – why are there no girls in the sciences? The author, Erik Lesser, explains that it because early education affects later development. Since there is already a bias against women in stem fields, the unconscious discouragement most young girls get in elementary school can affect their future career paths. For this reason, change should be made at elementary school level. The author also looks at the shockingly low statistics of girls in math and sciences courses in high schools and colleges, and attempts to explain how teachers tend to overestimate boys in those situations and underestimate girls.

Read an excerpt of the article written by CLAIRE CAIN MILLER:

We know that women are underrepresented in math and science jobs. What we don’t know is why it happens. There are various theories, and many of them focus on childhood. Parents and toy-makers discourage girls from studying math and science. So do their teachers. Girls lack role models in those fields, and grow up believing they wouldn’t do well in them. All these factors surely play some role. A new study points to the influence of teachers’ unconscious biases, but it also highlights how powerful a little encouragement can be. Early educational experiences have a quantifiable effect on the math  and science courses the students choose later, and eventually the jobs they get and the wages they earn. The effect is larger for children from families in which the father is more educated than the mother and for girls from lower-income families, according to the study, published this week by the National Bureau of Economic Research. The pipeline for women to enter math and science occupations narrows at many points between kindergarten and a career choice, but elementary school seems to be a critical juncture. Reversing bias among teachers could increase the number of women who enter fields like computer science and engineering, which are some of the fastest growing and highest paying. “It goes a long way to showing it’s not the students or the home, but the classroom teacher’s behavior that explains part of the differences over time between boys and girls,” said Victor Lavy, an economist at University of Warwick in England and a co-author of the paper. Previous studies have found that college professors and employers discriminate against female scientists. But it is not surprising that it begins even earlier. In computer science in the United States, for instance, just 18.5 percent of the high school students who take the Advanced Placement exam are girls. In college, women earn only 12 percent of computer science degrees. That is one reason that tech companies say they have hired so few women. ...read more

Internships Abroad: Unpaid, With a $10,000 Price Tag

This insightful article written be Steven Greenhouse explores the new field of international internships. Internships abroad can be a great experience, but they come at a price, Margaret Reigal writes. Since students often have to pay not only the internship providers, but also their school for the privilege of working at an unpaid internships, as well as the cost of their travel and living, the numbers rack up. The author fears that this exorbitant price tag can give wealthy students an unfair advantage in a system that already privileges them. Yet, most students report that their experiences have been worth the price, and that it was a better experience than a simple study abroad program. Unfortunately, local labour laws almost always forbid companies from paying foreign students, so the situation is unlikely to improve.

Read an excerpt of the article written by STEVEN GREENHOUSE:

Picture this: A summer behind the scenes at the Edinburgh Art Festival, helping set up a show and banquet, managing a guest list and communicating with artists and agents, plus an excursion to London and a tour of a Scotch distillery and 12th-century castle. That was Darius Francis’ internship last summer. He loved it. Who wouldn’t? “Anytime I talk to anyone about this experience, they say, ‘Wow, tell me about that,’ ” said Mr. Francis, a senior majoring in public relations at Eastern Illinois University. The only thing is, his 10 weeks cost more than $16,000, including $7,300 to the program provider, Panrimo, and $6,000 to Eastern Illinois for the nine credit hours earned through the internship. Mr. Francis was able to cobble together some financial help: a $6,000 federal loan and $3,800 in scholarships from the university’s study abroad office, Panrimo and a local nonprofit. His parents paid the rest. Demand for internships abroad has surged as students — and just as important, their parents — grow ever more worried about their job prospects after graduation and seek a foothold in a world that values global experience. “The hottest growth area in the whole international education area” is how Cheryl Matherly, vice provost for global education at the University of Tulsa, describes internships. “It’s a way to really make the international experience more relevant.” There is no good data over time, but according to the Institute of International Education, almost 20,500 Americans participated in for-credit internships in 2012-13, while about 15,000 interned, worked or volunteered abroad for no credit. For students, setting up an internship with an employer thousands of miles away is no easy feat. Seizing an opportunity, hundreds of program providers have jumped into the field, adding numerous bells and whistles and a steep price tag. GoAbroad.com, which offers information on international education, lists some 3,200 internships, usually unpaid, put together by over 700 providers. Most providers are for-profit companies, while some are educational nonprofit organizations. In addition, more and more universities, including Columbia, Georgia Tech, Rice, Yale and the University of Southern California, are arranging internships for their students, in part to keep costs down. UP AND DOWNSIDE Some experts complain that the internships give wealthy students an unfair leg up in the job market. “Expensive overseas internships are yet another way that the internship economy reinforces privilege, making the once unthinkable seem almost normal — people paying thousands of dollars to work,” said Ross Perlin, the author of “Intern Nation: How to Earn Nothing and Learn Little in the Brave New Economy.” But to many students and parents, even to families like the Francises, for whom the expenditure was a stretch, the benefits — the on-the-job learning and exposure to another culture — justify the cost. In a 2012 survey by the Institute for the International Education of Students, known as I.E.S. Abroad, 84 percent of their alumni said the experience had helped them build job skills; 89 percent reported getting a job within six months of graduation. Emily Merson, co-founder and C.E.O. of Global Experiences, a 13-year-old company that arranges internships in Dublin, London, Shanghai and other cities, argues that internships are more of an equalizer than study-abroad programs. “We’ve seen so many people do internships who would otherwise not study abroad because it’s too expensive,” Ms. Merson said. “A lot of students think, ‘An international internship is a really good idea, and I’m going to make sure I can afford it.’ ” She added: “We’re seeing proportionally far more first-generation college students doing internships abroad than doing study abroad, because it’s such a good strategic choice and such a good return on investment.” She explained where the “tuition” goes: internship placement, which involves one-on-one time with each student; housing, which she says is particularly expensive in London and Sydney, Australia; and visa assistance, orientation, social activities and weekend excursions, among other expenses. Airfare and food are not included. REVIEWS ARE IN Many colleges and universities compile lists of preferred providers, though students often turn to online peer comments for advice. Troy Peden, a founder of GoAbroad, cautions that testimonials are often skewed because of voluntary-response bias. Moreover, internships are particularly hard to review. “A lot of times, the satisfaction ratings for internships are all over the place,” he said. Are they reviewing the provider, who may be organizing only an orientation and a placement, or their boss, or the job itself? “You also have the interns themselves,” he added. “Were they a good intern? Did that impact their experience?” Some students rave; some grumble about being underutilized and not learning enough. Elena Friedberg, a junior majoring in history and French at the University of Michigan, had an eight-week internship at a bridal boutique in Paris arranged by Global Experiences. ...read more

Conflict and Ego

The article written by David Brooks openly examines the interplay between insult and response. It discusses the critical and crude nature of most reader’s comments on various articles. The author suggests responding to such a vituperative comment in a quiet and calm manner rather than in a derisive manner. The article states that the conversation becomes a battle of status as people hurl insult upon insult towards each other, making them more egoistic. Using Lincoln and ISIS as examples he enumerates the need to retaliate to such hate with peace, in order to avoid conflict. Thus we see the adverse affect “conflict” has on “ego”.

Read an excerpt of the article written by David Brooks:

Conflict and Ego By DAVID BROOKS If you read the online versions of newspaper columns you can click over to the reader comments, which are often critical, vituperative and insulting. I’ve found that I can only deal with these comments by following the adage, “Love your enemy.” It’s too psychologically damaging to read these comments as evaluations of my intelligence, morals or professional skill. But if I read them with the (possibly delusional) attitude that these are treasured friends bringing me lovely gifts of perspective, then my eye slides over the insults and I can usually learn something. The key is to get the question of my self-worth out of the way — which is actually possible unless the insulter is really creative. It’s not only newspaper columnists who face this kind of problem. Everybody who is on the Internet is subject to insult, trolling, hating and cruelty. Most of these online assaults are dominance plays. They are attempts by the insulter to assert his or her own superior status through displays of gratuitous cruelty toward a target. The natural but worst way to respond is to enter into the logic of this status contest. If he puffs himself up, you puff yourself up. But if you do this you put yourself and your own status at center stage. You enter a cycle of keyboard vengeance. You end up with a painfully distended ego, forever in danger, needing to assert itself, and sensitive to sleights. Clearly, the best way to respond is to step out of the game. It’s to get out of the status competition. Enmity is a nasty frame of mind. Pride is painful. The person who can quiet the self can see the world clearly, can learn the subject and master the situation. Historically, we reserve special admiration for those who can quiet the self even in the heat of conflict. Abraham Lincoln was caught in the middle of a horrific civil war. ...read more

New Harvard Policy Bans Teacher-Student Relations

The article written be Ashley Southall delves into Harvard’s recent ban on romantic or sexual relationships between students and teachers in response to Title X, federal law prohibiting sex discrimination in education. The authors note that the unequal power balance in such relationships can be very harmful for a student, giving the teacher an unreasonable amount of control over their partner, thus deeming consent hard to establish. However, the drive behind this recent ban seems to be the possibility of the university being financially liable for any sexual misconduct. Universities seem to want to watch their own back rather than look out for vulnerable students.

Read an excerpt of the article written by ASHLEY SOUTHALL:

Harvard University has adopted a ban on professors’ having sexual or romantic relationships with undergraduate students, joining a small but growing number of universities prohibiting such relationships. The move comes as the Obama administration investigates the handling of accusations of sexual assault at dozens of colleges, including Harvard. The ban clarifies an earlier policy that labeled sexual and romantic relationships between professors and the students they teach as inappropriate, but did not explicitly prohibit professors from having relationships with students they did not teach. Harvard said Thursday that the change had been made after a panel reviewing the institution’s policy on Title IX, the federal law prohibiting sex discrimination in education, determined that the university’s existing policy language on “relationships of unequal status did not explicitly reflect the faculty’s expectations of what constituted an appropriate relationship between undergraduate students and faculty members.” It said the policy had been revised “to include a clear prohibition to better accord with these expectations.” The change was recommended by the Faculty of Arts and Sciences Committee on Sexual Misconduct Policy and Procedures. ...read more

Is being a writer a job or a calling?

Who is a writer? What is his job? The author feels that the writers who touched him were those who had wanted, literally, to make something of themselves; and who offered him and others a means of understanding, and thus of elevating, their everyday lives.  Even the best writing will never have the immediate, measurable impact that a doctor’s work has, or a plumber’s. Writing is something everyone does. But is everyone a writer?

Read an excerpt of the article written by BENJAMIN MOSER:

Even the best writing won’t have the immediate, measurable impact of a doctor’s work, or a plumber’s. When, in adolescent secrecy, I began making my way from reading to writing, the writers who attracted me, the writers I wanted to be, were those who conceived of the writer as a member of a priestly caste, those whose view of literature as a means of understanding the self and the world offered a noble possibility for my life. Those writers who touched me were those who had wanted, literally, to make something of themselves; and who offered me and others a means of understanding, and thus of elevating, our everyday lives. Perhaps I was given to vocations — but vocations, as opposed to ambitions, were not much appreciated in high school; and, as when I returned from a week in a Benedictine monastery and knew not to mention how badly I had wanted to stay, I never mentioned the exalted idea I had been forming of writing. The earnestness, the vehemence the notion implied were so at odds with the surrounding ethos that it took me much longer to admit wanting to write than to admit wanting to sleep with men. That teenage vision of Parnassus was followed by years of sitting at the computer, fighting off feelings of boredom with work and frustration with self, as visions of art were replaced by visions of picking up the dry cleaning. ‘‘A writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people,’’ Thomas Mann said; and it is good that no beginner suspects how torturous writing is, or how little it improves with practice, or how the real rejections come not from editors but from our own awareness of the gap yawning between measly talent and lofty vocation. Fear of that gap destroys writers: through the failure of purpose called writer’s block; through the crutches we use to carry us past it. No young writer can know how rare inspiration is — or how, in its place, the real talent turns out to be sitting down, propelling oneself, day after day, through the self-doubt surrounding our nebulous enterprise, trying to believe, as when we began, that writing is important. ...read more

The Best Time of Day to Exercise to Lose Weight

What is the best time of the day to exercise and lose weight? loss? There is some evidence that working out on a completely empty stomach prompts the body to burn more fat and potentially stave off weight gain, compared to exercising at other times. After conducting a study in 2010 it was concluded that the men who exercised after breakfast had also packed on pounds, about three pounds each, and developed insulin problems. But the men who had exercised first thing in the morning, before eating anything, had gained almost no weight and retained healthy insulin levels. Therefore,Gretchen Reynolds concludes by saying that early-morning exercise in the fasted state is more potent than an identical amount of exercise in the fed state.

Read an excerpt of the article written by Gretchen Reynolds:

Question: What is the best time of day to exercise, if my goal is weight loss? Answer: You might try setting your wake-up alarm earlier and exercising before breakfast. There is some evidence that working out on a completely empty stomach — or, as scientists call this woozy, wee-hours condition, “in a fasted state” — prompts the body to burn more fat and potentially stave off weight gain, compared to exercising at other times. In a groundbreaking 2010 study, researchers in Belgium persuaded young, healthy men to stuff themselves for six weeks with a diet consisting of 30 percent more calories and 50 percent more fat than the men had been eating. Some of the volunteers remained sedentary while gorging. Others began a strenuous, midmorning exercise routine after they had had breakfast. The third group followed the same workout regimen, but before they had eaten anything. At the end of the six weeks, the sedentary group predictably was supersized and unhealthy, having gained about six pounds each. They had also developed insulin resistance and larded their muscles with new fat cells. The men who exercised after breakfast had also packed on pounds, about three pounds each, and developed insulin problems. But the men who had exercised first thing in the morning, before eating anything, had gained almost no weight and retained healthy insulin levels. ...read more