Protect workers, not jobs

Protect the jobs will increase unemployment.  "Protect workers, not jobs" as advocated by 2010 Nobel Prize laureate, Christopher Pissarides.

Job protection increases unemployment

Adaptive learning by big data: knewton

最近閲讀有關一家教育平台的公司，knewton.com，的資料。這家公司這六年來，投資者已挹注超過一億美元的資金。knewton 收集大量的數位學習資料，加以總體學習趨向的分析。然後根據每一個學生個人的學習資料和性向，給予個人化的即時學習建議和即時提供難易適中的問題。knewton 也提供老師每一個學生的詳細數位學習效率和預測每一個學生的學習效果。至今為止，knewton 平台在美國已經有五百萬學生使用，也提供超過二十億次的個人化學習建議。knewton 現在合作的對象，仍侷限在大型數位學習和教育機構，大型考試鑑定中心，大學和政府教育部門。knewton 網站宣稱他們在將來會免費供應中小學校老師軟體，讓老師能客製化學生的數位學習分析(但我相信老師使用的數位教學軟體供應者仍需和 knewton 合作，才會使得客製化學習分析達到最大效果)。knewton 的服務範圍仍限於美國和英國，以後可能會擴展到亞洲。
Knewton adaptive learning

It takes a village to raise a child

Astonished by the unfortunate events in the last few days across the Pacific Ocean, obviously attributed to the social anomie and discontent, probably many may beg the question that "it takes a family to raise a child" or it should escalate to "it takes the village to raise a child" ?
It takes a village to raise a child

Constant manna from heaven for bottom 20% stratum

Income inequality as measured by the tax records in the last 100 years may be "exaggerated". However, it is simply because government subsidy is not included in the statistics. In 2010, for family income in the bottom 20% stratum, 74% of the household income is from government alms. Income inequality has become more and more twisted.

Substantial salary disparity between male and female?

Is it really true that female salary is substantially lower than male salary as shown in this 2003 data (source: Congressional Budge Office). This buzzed-about topic was accentuated two weeks ago due to the ousted NY Times executive editor, Jill Abramson. Hard for me to be convinced that the salary disparity is based on the apple-to-apple comparison.  

Chinese transcends English

How to quench the craze of English-learning and promote the Chinese-centric nationalist mentality? The most effective approach is to de-emphasize the weight of English in College entrance exams. This is exactly what Chinese government is planning to do. The only unintended consequence of this government intervention is to widen the income inequality since it definitely will encourage more expensive private English-teaching institutions to sprout up everywhere.
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-05-22/china-moves-to-protect-its-language-from-english#p1

Service sector as a magnet for employments

As technology advances, more people are employed in service sectors, as high as 80% in US now. More than 20% in education and health, 20% in leisure activities, 20% in finance, transportation, real estate and services to companies, more than 10% for government and security services. More people in service sectors inevitably invites more competition.  

ever-declining population (and GDP!)

With the expected population growth as 0% or negative 40 years from now, GDP growth probably will hover around 1%; 2% will be excellent and 3% is virtually a miracle.  

Education spending as percentage of GDP

台灣2010年教育經費占國內生產毛額 (GDP) 和其他國家比，算蠻高的。似乎我們的教育品質還有改進的空間. 但是學生平均每年政府的花費，可能有誤導作用。紐澤西州的學生去年平均花掉政府 $18,891 美元 (美國平均值 $12,743 美元)。但是在紐澤西州內，有些地區高達 $43,775 美元，有些低到 $12,587 美元。而且，學生每年花費不一定和績效成正比。紐澤州的老師，因受到工會保護，幾乎没有任何淘汰制度。學生碰到什麽老師，只能靠運氣，除非和學校有"密切"關係。而且有些學區的行政費用的比率，實在是很驚人 

Top-12 countries with most rich individuals

美國富人最多 , 日本也不少, 中國急起直追. 南韓 2011 年加入 Top-12 富人俱樂部. 香港和印度 2012 年富人成長率高達 35.7% 和 22.2% 但總人數還無法進入 Top-12 富人俱樂部 source: http://www.capgemini.com/resource-file-access/resource/pdf/wwr_2013_0.pdf

Living beyond 90

How to live longer and resist from cognitive decline? Tonight's CBS's "60 Minutes" provided guidelines based on 23 years study for 14,000 cases. 1) no smoking 2) exercise (45-minute is the optimal) 3) 1-3 cups of coffee per day 4) modest amount of wine 5) normal weight or slightly overweight (yes, no typo here) 6) slightly high blood pressure (yes, no typo here) 7) Vitamin pills do not help 8) Modest indulgence in "unhealthy" food is OK 9) healthy social life 10) romance (yes, romance even after 90). However, it is inevitable that dementia rate may double for every 5 years after age 65.
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/living-to-90-and-beyond/