Economist, Mar 16, 2013

choi

(1) The lift business | Top Floor, Please; Things are looking up for liftmakers.  
http://www.economist.com/news/bu ... rs-top-floor-please

Quote:

"Four firms control two-thirds of the global market: Otis, part of America’s United Technologies; Kone of Finland; ThyssenKrupp, a unit of a German conglomerate; and Schindler, based in Ebikon, Switzerland.

"China, where two-thirds of new units are installed, accounts for much of the rise [of elevator sales].

"The secret to the industry’s whopping margins, however, is maintenance. * * * 11m machines are already in operation [worldwide] * * * Some fret that Chinese lift-owners are either maintaining the machines themselves or not at all.

Note:
(a) For lift, see elevator
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elevator
(or lift in the Commonwealth excluding Canada)
(b) Kone
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kone
(pronounced [KOH-neh]; founded in 1910 and headquartered in Espoo [2nd largest city of Finland], Finland; is the  fourth largest manufacturer of elevators worldwide, a leading manufacturer of escalators; In the Finnish language Kone means "machine" or "device")
(c) Schindler Group
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schindler_Group
(in 1874, by Robert Schindler and Eduard Villiger)

* The German and Jewish (Ashkenazic) surname Schindler was from "an agent derivative of * * * German Schindel ‘shingle.’"
(d) Ebikon
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ebikon
(e) The article mentions "pricier offerings such as double-decker cabins."

double-deck elevator
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double-deck_elevator


(2) Russia after Stalin | Do and Die; The pervasive pain of Russia's past
http://www.economist.com/news/bo ... ias-past-do-and-die
(book review on Alexander Etkind, Warped Mourning; Stories of the Undead in the Land of the Unburied. Stanford University Press, 2013)

Quote:

"His new book, 'Warped Mourning,' looks at the memory of the Stalinist terror: different from the Holocaust, he argues, because of its suicidal and random nature. Those persecuted by Adolf Hitler typically knew the reason, however hateful and twisted, for their suffering. Most of Josef Stalin’s victims had no idea. They included the hapless victims of the authorities’ requirement for quotas of subversives

Under Stalin: "Uncertainty compounds suffering. Many loved ones simply disappeared. Their relatives did not know why they had been taken, whether they would return, who would follow them, and who might be taken next.

My comment:
(a) From
Jung Chang and Jon Halliday, Mao; The Unknown Story. Various publishers, 2005, I learned Mao also practiced quota system to purge ordinary citizens.

* The surname Halliday variant of Holladay.
* Holladay is "from Old English haligdæg ‘holy day,’ ‘religious festival.’"
(b) The review mentions an "Alexander Solzhenitsyn['s literature about] a giant frozen salamander discovered in the tundra, roasted and devoured by starving prisoners."

Aleksandr I Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918-1956 Volume 1; An Experiment in Literary Investigation. English translation by Harper & Row, 1973
http://books.google.com/books?id ... e&q&f=false
(Preface, at page xvii)
(c) Nikolai Gogol
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikolai_Gogol
(1809-1852)