TPP: a double-edged sword

Obama is going to sign TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership) with the HELP from Congress. Ten days ago, Congressional leaders granted him "Trade Promotion Authority" which allows Obama administration to negotiate a deal and then submit it to Congress for a yes-or-no vote, without any amendments. TPP is expected to increase the average household income but, in the same breath, increase the unemployment rate for workers with lesser skill. This cruel consequence is inevitable when globalization prevails.  http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21649613-america-inches-towards-big-trade-deal-asia-barack-obama-faces-showdown

Desired class stratification in cruise

Class distinction on a cruise ship? In the U.S., cruise ship is an egalitarian world irrespective of the fee you pay. Many wealthy Chinese taking cruise vacation complain that it does not give them any privilege to cut in line or choose the premium seat to watch show since they pay more. I had a good time reading the recent issue of BusinessWeek but was amazed by the mindset of the economic "upper crust" in China.   http://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2015-china-cruises/

like a shark

It may be a hard act to follow that a foreigner strives to have English as good as highly educated native. Today in a meeting, I was the only one at sea when someone mentioned "Wow, you are like a shark". After googling for a while, it dawned on me that since sharks always swim and never sleep, "like a shark" is a metaphor of "always going forward without losing any momentum". It is almost a weekly routine to encounter this kind of phrases that do not exist in any dictionary. 

Watson Health

IBM announced "Watson Health" 4 days ago and IBM's CEO Ginni Rometty articulated it in Charlie Rose program last night in PBS. Watson has been trained by top-notch doctors in Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, MD Anderson Cancer Center, Cleveland Clinic and Mayo Clinic. Watson has already stored 90 million patients data for its cognitive analysis. In the future, this cloud-based medical service may render some doctor's services moot since Watson can use natural language to explain the evidence-based medical cases it stores from myriad of patients.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46MYhalt7EU

Don't be evil

Google has a famous corporate motto, "Don't be evil". Ironically, if you search "antitrust" today, the first article appears is EU charges Google of violation of antitrust law.

Why is rent-seeking so costly to growth?

NY Times today has a sobering article about the concern of talented students flocking to finance sector. Influential economists in both Uni. of Chicago and Harvard Uni. found an interesting impact on GDP from the majors of college students. 10% increase of engineering majors will lead to 1.25% increase of GDP. 10% increase of law majors will incur 0.65% decrease of GDP. (Table VI inhttp://www.nyu.edu/e…/user/bisina/murphy_shleifer_vishny.pdf)    http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/12/upshot/why-a-harvard-professor-has-mixed-feelings-when-students-take-jobs-in-finance.html?abt=0002&abg=0   

Lake Carnegie

I always treat it a blessing that I can enjoy the natural beauty of Raritan Canal close to my neighborhood. Only recently did I learn that Lake Carnegie, a lake located in Princeton University and connected to Raritan Canal, was dredged and totally funded by Andrew Carnegie in 1906. The reason: Princeton rowing varsity team needed a lake to practice and Carnegie was happy to oblige the team's request. Princeton, the university with highest per capita endowment in the whole world, has its own train station and an immense lake with stunning beauty.   

Hands-off may be better than hands-on

If you use the flip-the-coin approach to buy stock, your chance to beat the Wall Street stock fund managers is very high. The U.S. market benchmark index, S&P 1500 beat 81% of all the actively managed stock funds in the last five years. Out of 2863 active stock funds, only 2 can stay in the top 25% for consecutive four years and 0 in five years. This sobering NYT article may be another story of hands-off (無為而治) approach sometimes is better than hands-on course of action.   http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/05/your-money/measure-for-measure-index-funds-rule.html

classdojo

On my way home today, I heard from radio that a free app, classdojo (www.classdojo.com) has made a splash in the educational landscape in the last three years. One-third of US schools (probably not every teacher) use this app to track students' behavior. This app is among the top 25 of all downloads. Advocates claim that this app takes the game-like feature to help students' learning. Dopamine may be released when students with positive behavior are rewarded by teacher on the classdojo app (accumulating points or visual tokens), which, in turn, may enhance long-term learning motivation. Opponents voice their privacy concerns of the students' behavioral information stored in classdojo.comsite. (Classdojo announced last year that they would only keep students' data for one-year starting from 2015)    
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/17/technology/privacy-concerns-for-classdojo-and-other-tracking-apps-for-schoolchildren.html?_r=0