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/