Economist, Feb 16, 2013 (2)

choi

Buttonwood | Teacher, Leave Them Kids Alone; Financial education has had disappointing results in the past.
http://www.economist.com/news/fi ... -teacher-leave-them

(a) Quote:

(i) "HERE is a test. Suppose you had $100 in a savings account that paid an interest rate of 2% a year. If you leave the money in the account, how much would you have accumulated after five years: more than $102, exactly $102, or less than $102? And would an investor who received 1% interest when inflation was 2% see his spending power rise, fall or stay the same?

"This test might seem a little simple for readers of The Economist. But a survey found that only half of Americans aged over 50 gave the correct answers. If so many people are mathematically challenged, it is hardly surprising that they struggle to deal with the small print of mortgage and insurance contracts.

(ii) "When a free online financial-literacy course was offered to struggling credit-card borrowers, only 0.4% logged on to the website and just 0.03% completed the course.

(b) My comment:
(i) There is NO need to read the rest.
(ii) Buttonwood
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buttonwood
is "a column in The Economist named for that agreement")
(iii) The title ("Teacher, leave them kids alone") is a line in Part 2 of Pink Floyd's 1979 songs

Another Brick in the Wall
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Another_Brick_in_the_Wall
(iv) The online version of the article supplies the links to surveys cited in the article (the print version points to the online one). For example, Quotation (i) about 2% interest rate is found in

William G Gale and Ruth Levine, Financial Literacy: What Works? How Could It Be More Effective?  Rand, October 2010, at *7.

* I can not find the source of quotation (ii).

choi

Free exchange | Middle-Income Claptrap; Do countries get 'trapped' between poverty and prosperity?
http://www.economist.com/news/fi ... dle-income-claptrap
("The middle-income trap is rarely defined clearly enough to be tested")

My comment:
(a) Economist gives an surprising answer: "No."
(b)
(i) claptrap (n; 2clap; from its attempt to win applause; First Known Use 1799):
"pretentious nonsense : TRASH"
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/claptrap
(ii) clap is defined as 1 verb, and 2 noun (that is what 2 as a superscript means in the preceding definition).
http://www.merriam-webster.com/d ... =0&t=1361553494
(c) The article says, "This trap, named by Indermit Gill, of the World Bank, and Homi Kharas, now of the Brookings Institution, worries policymakers from Malaysia to Mexico."

It alludes to

Indermit Gill and Homi Kharas, An East Asian Renaissance; Ideas for Economic growth. World Bank, 2007.
http://siteresources.worldbank.o ... enaissance_full.pdf
(i) The book was written when both were at World Bank, where Mr Gill remains.
(ii) Indermit Gill, Chief Economist of the Europe and Central Asia Region of the World Bank
http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/COUNTRIES/ECAEXT/0,,contentMDK:22339432~pagePK:146736~piPK:146830~theSitePK:258599,00.html
is from India.
(iii) Homi Kharas
http://www.brookings.edu/experts/kharash
is from Pakistan/

choi

Manufacturing metals | A Tantalising Prospect; Exotic but useful metals such as tantalum and titanium are about to become cheap and plentiful.
(paragraph 1: "ALUMINIUM was once more costly than gold. Napoleon III, emperor of France, reserved cutlery made from it for his most favoured guests, and the Washington monument, in America’s capital, was capped with it not because the builders were cheapskates but because they wanted to show off. How times change. And in aluminium’s case they changed because, in the late 1880s, Charles Hall and Paul Héroult worked out how to separate the stuff from its oxide using electricity rather than chemical reducing agents. Now, the founders of Metalysis, a small British firm, hope to do much the same with tantalum, titanium and a host of other recherché and expensive metallic elements")

My comment:
(a) There is no need to read the rest, about a dream.
(b) There were too many Charles Halls. So I began with

Paul Héroult
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_H%C3%A9roult
(1863-1914; inventor of the aluminium electrolysis and of the electric steel furnace)

Quote: "when he was 15 years old * * * aluminium was as expensive as silver and was used mostly for luxury items and jewellery. Héroult wanted to make it cheaper. He succeeded in doing so when he discovered the electrolytic aluminium process in 1886. The same year, in the United States, Charles Martin Hall (1863–1914) was discovering the same process. Because of this the process was called the Hall-Heroult process."

* That is right, the two inventors were born and dead the same years.
* For the pronunciation, see Heroult
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/heroult
(c) recherché (adj; French, from past participle of rechercher to seek out, alteration of recercher, from Middle French — more at RESEARCH):
"EXOTIC, RARE"
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/recherché

choi

18th-century courtship | An Inept Pygmalion; A darkly amusing tale about the struggle to create the perfect wife.
http://www.economist.com/news/bo ... ife-inept-pygmalion
(book review on Wendy Moore, How to Create the Perfect Wife. Weidenfeld & Nicolson (London), 2013)

My comment:
(a) The review states, "Though less ripping than 'Wedlock,' this story is told with gusto."

ripping (adj): "chiefly British: EXCELLENT, DELIGHTFUL <I've had a ripping time here — WS Maugham>"
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ripping
(b)
(i) Thomas Day
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Day
(1748-1789; a British author and abolitionist)

Two quotations from section 1 Life and works:

"After this [his own] education project, Day undertook a second: he tried to train a wife. * * * Day did finally meet his "paragon" of a woman in Esther Milnes (1753–1792), an heiress from Chesterfield. They were married on Aug 7, 1778")

"In 1773, Day published his first work-"The Dying Negro," a poem he had written with John Bicknell that tells the horrifying story of a runaway slave; it was a bestseller.

(ii) The second quotation is the only reference I can find, in limited time, about Mr Bicknell.
(iii) Lichfield
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lichfield
is in the region of the Midlands, England
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Midlands,_England
, whose largest city was, and is, Birmingham.
(iv) For Lunar Men, see Lunar Society of Birmingham
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_Society_of_Birmingham
(met regularly between 1765 and 1813 in Birmingham [and midlands, England]; The name arose because the society would meet during the full moon, as the extra light made the journey home easier and safer in the absence of street lighting)
(c) The review states "she escapes by the skin of her teeth."
(d) The review comments, "What Day needed was someone young and unformed, a Galatea to his Pygmalion."
(e) What impress me most is this part of the last paragraph:

"Ms Moore has combed the orphange's archives, read the form of each baby and seen the tokens left with them--a single earring, a piece of fabric, a playing card torn in half--in the hope of a future reunion."

Orphans likely were at the bottom of the totem pole. Still the English kept their artifacts after three centuries. That is something.

choi

The rise of solo living | A Room of One’s Own; The privileges and perils of living alone.
http://www.economist.com/news/bo ... alone-room-ones-own
(book review on Eric Klinenberg, Going Solo; The extraordinary rise and surprising appeal of living alone. Penguin Press (US) and Gerald Duckworth & Co (UK), 2013)

My comment: The review says, "In America more than half of all adults are single and roughly one out of seven lives alone. * * * Nearly everyone who lives alone prefers it to their other options, says Mr Klinenberg, and ever more people hope to join the ranks."
(a) Unmarried and Single Americans Week Sept. 16-22, 2012. Census Bureau, July 31, 2012.
http://www.census.gov/newsroom/r ... ions/cb12-ff18.html   

Quote:

"55 million  Number of households maintained by unmarried men and women in 2011. These households comprised 46 percent of households nationwide.

"6.8 million  Number of unmarried-partner households in 2010. Of this number, 593,000 were same-sex households."