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Welfare in the age of robots Berning out in California French resistance strikes again Walmart v Amazon JUNE 4TH– 10TH 2016 Chinese science: shooting for the stars Free speech under attack # W H ATD R I V E S YO U DRIVE DE CARTIER MANUFACTURE MOVEMENT 1904 MC THE DRIVE DE CARTIER COLLECTION IS ELEGANCE REDEFINED THE SLEEK LINES OF THIS CUSHION-SHAPED WATCH CREATE A TRULY STYLISH PIECE, BROUGHT TO LIFE BY THE MAISON MANUFACTURE MOVEMENT 1904 MC ESTABLISHED IN 1847, CARTIER CREATES EXCEPTIONAL WATCHES THAT COMBINE DARING DESIGN AND WATCHMAKING SAVOIR-FAIRE Shop the collection on cartier.com The Economist June 4th 2016 Contents The world this week On the cover Curbs on free speech are growing tighter It is time to speak out: leader, page The many ways freedom of speech is in retreat, page 51 Where the state sits by as Islamists murder secular speakers, page 53 University protesters believe they are fighting for justice; their critics think open discourse is imperilled, page 54 The Economist online Daily analysis and opinion to supplement the print edition, plus audio and video, and a daily chart Economist.com E-mail: newsletters and mobile edition Economist.com/email Print edition: available online by 7pm London time each Thursday Economist.com/print Audio edition: available online to download each Friday Economist.com/audioedition Volume 419 Number 8992 Published since September 1843 to take part in "a severe contest between intelligence, which presses forward, and an unworthy, timid ignorance obstructing our progress." Editorial offices in London and also: Atlanta, Beijing, Berlin, Brussels, Cairo, Chicago, Lima, Mexico City, Moscow, Mumbai, Nairobi, New Delhi, New York, Paris, San Francisco, São Paulo, Seoul, Shanghai, Singapore, Tokyo, Washington DC Leaders Free speech Under attack 10 Strikes in France Don’t cave in, Mr Hollande 12 Rethinking welfare Basically flawed 14 Indian banking Of banks and bureaucrats 14 Shopping in America Walmart v Amazon 16 Fighting corruption Raking up the muck Letters 18 On anti-Semitism, Brexit, Ban Ki-moon, referendums, egg shells Briefing 21 Universal basic incomes Paradise to come Asia 25 Japanese politics A tax rise delayed 26 Africans in India They don’t love us 27 Banyan Sino-American rivalry China 28 Education The class ceiling 29 Commemorating Tiananmen Hong Kong’s struggle to remember United States 30 Bernie Sanders California, here we come 31 The campaigns Heard on the trail 31 Chicago Predictable policing 32 Refugees Their own public Idaho 34 Lexington Trumpology The Americas 35 Brazil’s economy Nowhere to go but up 36 Poverty in Argentina Gutted community 37 Bello Peru’s election Middle East and Africa 38 Railways in Africa Puffed out 39 Crimes against humanity One dictator down 40 Nigeria’s life coaches Yes you can! 40 Palestine A museum without exhibits 41 Syria’s war Never-ending horror 41 Western Sahara Leader of a lost cause 42 Arab innovation Free the geeks 42 Qatar The other Wahhabi state 43 44 44 45 46 47 Europe France on strike To the barricades Turkey’s Kurds War of attrition Germany and the Armenian genocide Name and shame Corruption in Romania Death of an antiseptic salesman Russia’s empty elections United Russia, divided Putin Charlemagne For the love of pizza Britain 48 Brexit and the union Tug of war 49 Muslim retail market Modesty sells 50 Bagehot Pity the Brexpats Bernie Sanders The Democratic challenger thinks he still has a shot at the nomination He’s wrong, page 30 Heard on the trail, page 31 French strikes This time François Hollande must not cave in: leader, page 10 France tries to end its industrial conflicts before Europe’s football championship starts, page 43 Brexit: the union and the expats A vote to leave could lead to a second Scottish independence referendum But the place to fret about most is Northern Ireland, page 48 Britain’s long-overlooked diaspora could pay a high price on June 23rd: Bagehot, page 50 Contents continues overleaf Contents The Economist June 4th 2016 International 51 Free speech The muzzle grows tighter 53 Bangladesh Muted by machetes 54 Campus protests The colliding of the American mind 56 A youthful trend Don’t be so offensive Universal basic income Proponents underestimate how disruptive it would be: leader, page 12 Arguments for a state stipend payable to all citizens are being heard more widely, pages 21-24 Reasons to be less afraid about the march of machines, page 67 Education in China Meritocratic exams for university admission are no remedy for deep inequalities in education, page 28 Fraud, bureaucracy and an obsession with quantity over quality still hold Chinese science back, page 73 Business 57 Walmart Thinking outside the box 60 Digital celebrities From smartphone to cinema 60 Price-fixing No truck with cartels 61 Morocco’s factories Factories in the sun 62 Apple in India Forbidden fruit 63 Schumpeter The evolution of Mr Thiel Finance and economics 65 Reforming Indian banks Bureaucrats at the till 66 Buttonwood The productivity puzzle 67 China’s currency Bending, not breaking 67 Automation Workers v robots, round two 68 Crypto-currencies Etherised 68 Aircraft finance Crowded skies 71 SMEs in developing countries Caught in the middle 72 Free exchange Israel’s economy Science and technology 73 Chinese science Schrödinger’s panda 74 An update on AIDS HIV’s slow retrenchment 74 Zika and the Olympics Stay or shift? 75 Avoiding sunburn Patched up 76 Black holes We want information 76 Peppered moths Jumping to attention Books and arts 77 Developing-world economics The rise and fall of nations 78 Johnson Language peeves 79 The 100-year life Live long and prosper 79 The meaning of grit Passion and perseverance 80 Tate Modern Home of the brave 84 Economic and financial indicators Statistics on 42 economies, plus a closer look at manufacturing activity Obituary 86 Jane Fawcett The deb who sank the Bismarck Peter Thiel The tech billionaire has morphed from a libertarian into a corporate Nietzschean: Schumpeter, page 63 Subscription service For our full range of subscription offers, including digital only or print and digital combined visit Economist.com/offers You can subscribe or renew your subscription by mail, telephone or fax at the details below: Telephone: +65 6534 5166 Facsimile: +65 6534 5066 Web: Economist.com/offers E-mail: Asia@subscriptions.economist.com Post: The Economist Subscription Centre, Tanjong Pagar Post Office PO Box 671 Singapore 910817 Subscription for year (51 issues)Print only Australia 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Economist Newspaper Limited All rights reserved Neither this publication nor any part of it may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of The Economist Newspaper Limited Published every week, except for a year-end double issue, by The Economist Newspaper Limited The Economist is a registered trademark of The Economist Newspaper Limited Publisher: The Economist Printed by Times Printers (in Singapore) M.C.I (P) No.034/09/2015 PPS 677/11/2012(022861) The Economist June 4th 2016 The world this week Politics Industrial unrest spread throughout France A week after a blockade of oil refineries led to panic at the petrol pumps, the country was crippled by another round of strikes, as transport workers joined the picket lines The dispute, over the government’s modest reforms to loosen labour-market restrictions, has pitted unionised workers against the Socialist government of François Hollande The UN’s refugee agency reported that at least 880 migrants were feared drowned in a single week in the Mediterranean In the first five months of 2016, 2,510 had died trying to make the crossing to Europe, up by 35% compared with the same period last year In Brussels the European Commission issued a formal objection to changes made by the Polish government in December to Poland’s constitutional court, which potentially endanger the rule of law The government, led by the Eurosceptical Law and Justice party, now has to address the criticisms; failure to so could lead to sanctions or to Poland losing its voting rights in the European Union After two decades of work, Switzerland officially opened the Gotthard base train tunnel, the world’s longest, at an event attended by European leaders, including Angela Merkel At 57.5km (35 miles) the Gotthard base is 7km longer than the Channel Tunnel When it starts operating in December it will increase the capacity for transporting freight along the Rotterdam-toGenoa corridor sure It used to buy rifles and hire military instructors from the dictatorship Breaking the rules Luis Almagro, the secretarygeneral of the Organisation of American States, called an emergency meeting to consider suspending Venezuela under the organisation’s “democratic charter” He is the first head of the OAS to invoke the charter against the will of a member state But a group of countries led by Argentina is seeking to delay the meeting in order to allow more time for mediation between Venezuela’s populist government and the opposition Mohamed Kuno, the plotter behind the attacks on Garissa University in Kenya last year in which 148 people were murdered, was killed in Somalia, according to officials Brazil’s interim anti-corruption minister, Fabiano Silveira, resigned after recordings were leaked in which he appears to advise a high-ranking politician on how to defend himself in an investigation of the multibillion-dollar Petrobras scandal He is the second minister to resign in similar circumstances since Michel Temer became Brazil’s interim president in May Fighter jets bombed Idlib, a rebel-held provincial capital in northern Syria, killing over 20 people Russia denied it was responsible for what was the heaviest bombardment of the city since a partial ceasefire was declared last February Iran said it was banning its citizens from joining the pilgrimage to Mecca in September in protest at Saudi Arabia’s “obstacles” Hundreds of Iranians were among some 2,400 pilgrims killed in last year’s stampede at Mecca, but the two countries have failed to agree on compensation China’s capital, Beijing, is planning to introduce a congestion charge, possibly later this year, according to state media The rapid growth of a car-owning middle class has reduced traffic in parts of the city to a crawl during peak hours Cars are already sometimes banned from being used at certain periods of the week America’s defence secretary, Ashton Carter, said China could be erecting a “great wall of self-isolation” by undercutting principles that other countries have sought to establish for use of the seas, the internet and management of the global economy, which reflected “the region’s distant past, rather than the principled future” China responded by saying that some Americans’ minds were “stuck in the cold war” Not letting the memory fade Libyan forces pushed Islamic State fighters back from two coastal towns near oil installations, reducing its control of the Mediterranean shore Still defiant, but going to jail Escalating tensions South Korean officials said that North Korea tried to launch a missile from its east coast, which flew for a few seconds before exploding China urged calm Barack Obama called North Korea “a big worry” Hissène Habré, the president of Chad from 1982 to 1990, was found guilty of crimes against humanity, rape and torture by a court in Senegal set up under the auspices of the African Union Around 40,000 people died under the dictator’s reign of terror before he fled Chad for exile in Senegal He is the first ex-head of state to be convicted in another country’s national court-system, rather than at a special tribunal Uganda announced it has cut all military ties with North Korea after international pres- Rodrigo Duterte, presidentelect of the Philippines, was embroiled in more controversy Just days after a reporter was killed in Manila he said, “If you’re an upright journalist, nothing will happen to you,” but “just because you’re a journalist, you are not exempted from assassination if you’re a son of a bitch.” Prosecutors in Singapore opened a money-laundering probe into 1MDB, a Malaysian state-investment firm It is the city-state’s biggest-ever inquiry of its kind Bail was denied to a former wealth manager at the branch of a Swiss private bank, who faces charges in connection with the investigation Barack Obama visited Hiroshima, the first president of the United States to go there since America dropped an atom bomb on the city in August 1945 Mr Obama called again for a world free of nuclear weapons, though under his administration America has upgraded its nukes, as have Russia and China Donald Trump, the putative Republican candidate for president, announced that he would be in Scotland at the reopening of one of his golf courses on June 24th The date, a day after Britain votes on whether to remain in the EU, may not be a coincidence Although Mr Trump appears not to know the meaning of “Brexit” in interviews, he has expressed a desire that Britain should leave the club (Europe, not his golf club) The Economist June 4th 2016 figures came with the usual warnings about their reliability Other indicators, such as weak private investment and exports, suggest the economic picture is more mixed Business 2016 GDP forecasts % increase on a year earlier The world this week India China United States Britain Euro area Japan Source: OECD In its latest twice-yearly global assessment, the OECD warned that the world economy is “stuck in a low-growth trap” The organisation said monetary policy alone could no longer be relied on to deliver growth and governments should be using the fiscal tools at their disposal, such as increases in investment spending, to stimulate demand It also pointed to several downside risks to global growth, the most immediate of which would be if Britain votes to leave the European Union in a referendum on June 23rd The OECD forecast that Brazil’s economy will shrink by 4.3% this year Official data this week showed that the country’s GDP contracted by 5.4% in the first quarter compared with the same period last year Although bad, many economists were expecting the figure to be much worse Shinzo Abe, Japan’s prime minister, delayed a controversial rise in the country’s sales tax until 2019 The increase, from 8% to 10%, was supposed to take place next April, having already been postponed once An initial rise in the tax in 2014 was widely blamed for throwing Japan into recession Tiger, tiger, burning bright India’s economy grew by 7.9% in the first three months of the year compared with the same quarter in 2015 For the fiscal year ending March 31st GDP rose by 7.6%, the fastest pace in five years The government was quick to take the credit, pointing to its pro-business reforms But India’s impressive Consumer spending in America grew by 1% in April compared with March, the biggest increase in nearly seven years The data will be taken as more evidence that the economy is racing ahead by those who want the Federal Reserve to lift interest rates again this month Martin Senn, who stepped down as chief executive of Zurich Insurance in December, committed suicide at his holiday home in Klosters Three years ago the company’s finance director also took his own life, prompting soulsearching about the stresses faced by busy executives An independent investigation into that incident concluded that the insurer’s leadership was not putting undue pressure on management Yusuf Alireza unexpectedly quit as chief executive of Noble Group, Asia’s biggest commodities-trading firm Noble, which is based in Hong Kong, has been hit by the slump in commodity prices and faces allegations from a research outfit that it overstated its assets, which the company denies On the day that Mr Alireza’s departure was announced Noble also said it would sell its profitable American retail-energy business; the proceeds will go towards repairing its balance-sheet SoftBank needs to repay the debt it accumulated to fund a number of big acquisitions, including the Sprint network in America It is reportedly looking to offload some of its other stakes, including in Supercell, a Finnish mobilegaming firm Debt spirals The Obama administration detailed new rules to regulate providers of payday loans Such lending is aimed at people on low incomes and attracts very high interest rates The government wants lenders to more to assess a borrower’s ability to repay A jury in California rejected Oracle’s $9 billion claim that Google infringed its copyright on Java by wiring the software into Android phones Oracle took ownership of Java when it bought Sun Microsystems in 2010 and it has been battling with Google in the courts ever since The jury found that Google’s use of Java came under the “fair use” element of copyright law Saudi Arabia’s sovereignwealth fund ploughed $3.5 billion into Uber and got a seat on its board It is the taxi-hailing app’s biggest single infusion of cash, and brings the total from its latest round of financing to $5 billion The privately held firm is estimated to be worth more than General Motors SoftBank, a multinational telecoms and internet group that is based in Japan, decided to sell $7.9 billion-worth of the shares it holds in Alibaba, which will reduce its stake in the Chinese e-commerce company from 32% to 28% High maintenance A former director at Barclays in New York was charged with allegedly passing inside information on forthcoming mergers to his plumber, who has pleaded guilty to using the illegal tips to make money on the markets The director has yet to enter a plea The plumber repaid the banker in part by refurbishing his bathroom, but this apparently did not include plugging financial leaks Other economic data and news can be found on pages 84-85 The Economist June 4th 2016 Leaders Under attack Curbs on free speech are growing tighter It is time to speak out I N A sense, this is a golden age for free speech Your smartphone can call up newspapers from the other side of world in seconds More than a billion tweets, Facebook posts and blog updates are published every single day Anyone with access to the internet can be a publisher, and anyone who can reach Wikipedia enters a digital haven where America’s First Amendment reigns However, watchdogs report that speaking out is becoming more dangerous—and they are right As our report on page 51 shows, curbs on free speech have grown tighter Without the contest of ideas, the world is timid and ignorant Free speech is under attack in three ways First, repression by governments has increased Several countries have reimposed cold-war controls or introduced new ones After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia enjoyed a free-for-all of vigorous debate Under Vladimir Putin, the muzzle has tightened again All the main television-news outlets are now controlled by the state or by Mr Putin’s cronies Journalists who ask awkward questions are no longer likely to be sent to labour camps, but several have been murdered China’s leader, Xi Jinping, ordered a crackdown after he took over in 2012, toughening up censorship of social media, arresting hundreds of dissidents and replacing liberal debate in universities with extra Marxism In the Middle East the overthrow ofdespots during the Arab spring let people speak freely for the first time in generations This has lasted in Tunisia, but Syria and Libya are more dangerous for journalists than they were before the uprisings; and Egypt is ruled by a man who says, with a straight face: “Don’t listen to anyone but me.” Words, sticks and stones Second, a worrying number of non-state actors are enforcing censorship by assassination Reporters in Mexico who investigate crime or corruption are often murdered, and sometimes tortured first Jihadists slaughter those they think have insulted their faith When authors and artists say anything that might be deemed disrespectful of Islam, they take risks Secular bloggers in Bangladesh are hacked to death in the street (see page 53); French cartoonists are gunned down in their offices The jihadists hurt Muslims more than any others, not least by making it harder for them to have an honest discussion about how to organise their societies Third, the idea has spread that people and groups have a right not to be offended This may sound innocuous Politeness is a virtue, after all But if I have a right not to be offended, that means someone must police what you say about me, or about the things I hold dear, such as my ethnic group, religion, or even political beliefs Since offence is subjective, the power to police it is both vast and arbitrary Nevertheless, many students in America and Europe believe that someone should exercise it Some retreat into the absolutism of identity politics, arguing that men have no right to speak about feminism nor whites to speak about slavery Others have blocked thoughtful, well-known speakers, such as Condoleezza Rice and Ayaan Hirsi Ali, from being heard on campus (see page 54) Concern for the victims of discrimination is laudable And student protest is often, in itself, an act of free speech But university is a place where students are supposed to learn how to think That mission is impossible if uncomfortable ideas are off-limits And protest can easily stray into preciousness: the University of California, for example, suggests that it is a racist “micro-aggression” to say that “America is a land of opportunity”, because it could be taken to imply that those who not succeed have only themselves to blame The inconvenient truth Intolerance among Western liberals also has wholly unintended consequences Even despots know that locking up mouthy but non-violent dissidents is disreputable Nearly all countries have laws that protect freedom of speech So authoritarians are always looking out for respectable-sounding excuses to trample on it National security is one Russia recently sentenced Vadim Tyumentsev, a blogger, to five years in prison for promoting “extremism”, after he criticised Russian policy in Ukraine “Hate speech” is another China locks up campaigners for Tibetan independence for “inciting ethnic hatred”; Saudi Arabia flogs blasphemers; Indians can be jailed for up to three years for promoting disharmony “on grounds of religion, race caste or any other ground whatsoever” The threat to free speech on Western campuses is very different from that faced by atheists in Afghanistan or democrats in China But when progressive thinkers agree that offensive words should be censored, it helps authoritarian regimes to justify their own much harsher restrictions and intolerant religious groups their violence When human-rights campaigners object to what is happening under oppressive regimes, despots can point out that liberal democracies such as France and Spain also criminalise those who “glorify” or “defend” terrorism, and that many Western countries make it a crime to insult a religion or to incite racial hatred One strongman who has enjoyed tweaking the West for hypocrisy is Recep Tayyip Erdogan, president of Turkey At home, he will tolerate no insults to his person, faith or policies Abroad, he demands the same courtesy—and in Germany he has found it In March a German comedian recited a satirical poem about him “shagging goats and oppressing minorities” (only the more serious charge is true) Mr Erdogan invoked an old, neglected German law against insulting foreign heads of state Amazingly, Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, has let the prosecution proceed Even more amazingly, nine other European countries still have similar laws, and 13 bar insults against their own head of state Opinion polls reveal that in many countries support for free speech is lukewarm and conditional If words are upsetting, people would rather the government or some other authority made the speaker shut up A group of Islamic countries are lobbying to make insulting religion a crime under international 10 Leaders The Economist June 4th 2016 law They have every reason to expect that they will succeed So it is worth spelling out why free expression is the bedrock of all liberties Free speech is the best defence against bad government Politicians who err (that is, all of them) should be subjected to unfettered criticism Those who hear it may respond to it; those who silence it may never find out how their policies misfired As Amartya Sen, a Nobel laureate, has pointed out, no democracy with a free press ever endured famine In all areas of life, free debate sorts good ideas from bad ones Science cannot develop unless old certainties are queried Taboos are the enemy of understanding When China’s government orders economists to offer optimistic forecasts, it guarantees that its own policymaking will be ill-informed When American social-science faculties hire only left-wing professors, their research deserves to be taken less seriously The law should recognise the right to free speech as nearly absolute Exceptions should be rare Child pornography should be banned, since its production involves harm to children States need to keep some things secret: free speech does not mean the right to publish nuclear launch codes But in most areas where campaigners are calling for enforced civility (or worse, deference) they should be resisted Blasphemy laws are an anachronism A religion should be open to debate Laws against hate speech are unworkably subjective and widely abused Banning words or arguments which one group finds offensive does not lead to social harmony On the contrary, it gives everyone an incentive to take offence—a fact that opportunistic politicians with ethnic-based support are quick to exploit Incitement to violence should be banned However, it should be narrowly defined as instances when the speaker in- tends to goad those who agree with him to commit violence, and when his words are likely to have an immediate effect Shouting “Let’s kill the Jews” to an angry mob outside a synagogue qualifies Drunkenly posting “I wish all the Jews were dead” on an obscure Facebook page probably does not Saying something offensive about a group whose members then start a riot certainly does not count They should have responded with words, or by ignoring the fool who insulted them In volatile countries, such as Rwanda and Burundi, words that incite violence will differ from those that would so in a stable democracy But the principles remain the same The police should deal with serious and imminent threats, not arrest every bigot with a laptop or a megaphone (The governments of Rwanda and Burundi, alas, show no such restraint.) Areopagitica online Facebook, Twitter and other digital giants should, as private organisations, be free to decide what they allow to be published on their platforms By the same logic, a private university should be free, as far as the law is concerned, to enforce a speech code on its students If you don’t like a Christian college’s rules against swearing, pornography and expressing disbelief in God, you can go somewhere else However, any public college, and any college that aspires to help students grow intellectually, should aim to expose them to challenging ideas The world outside campus will often offend them; they must learn to fight back using peaceful protests, rhetoric and reason These are good rules for everyone Never try to silence views with which you disagree Answer objectionable speech with more speech Win the argument without resorting to force And grow a tougher hide Strikes in France Don’t cave in, Mr Hollande The game that really matters is the political one, not football F RANCE has been looking forward to staging a big spectacle this month Euro 2016, an international football tournament second in importance only to the World Cup, kicks off in the Stade de France near Paris on June 10th, the first of 51 matches around the country ending with the final on July 10th But a spectacle of a different sort is attracting attention to France early, and for the wrong reasons: industrial unrest, which threatens to spread chaos and spoil the party Last week a blockade of oil refineries led to panic among motorists as petrol stations ran dry This week the havoc spread to the railways Pilots at Air France have voted to disrupt flights A national day of strikes is threatened on June 14th, when the Senate, the upper house, is due to consider the changes to France’s labour laws which are at the centre of the dispute At issue are modest reforms designed to tackle the country’s high unemployment, which remains stubbornly at 10% The law would ease rigid collective-bargaining rules and make firing workers slightly less complex But this is not the direction of change that France’s Socialist president, François Hollande, promised when he was elected four years ago, pledging to fight austerity and soak the rich (see page 43) Fearful of a rebellion by left-wingers in his own party, his prime minister, Manuel Valls, decided to ram the measures through the National Assembly using executive powers that allow a law to be approved by a motion of confidence, rather than voted on directly The country’s biggest union, the hard-left Confédération Générale du Travail (CGT), has opted to confront the government in the time-honoured French way—and at a moment of maximum pressure, with Euro 2016 looming This time, no surrender The last thing the government wanted was further trouble for a tournament already beset by heightened concerns over terrorist attacks (this week the State Department warned would-be American travellers that Euro 2016 was a potential target) Mr Hollande, his approval rating at a dismal 13%, is poorly placed for a showdown And the labour reforms, already diluted to an extent that has cost the support of the main employers’ groups, might seem an odd cause for the Socialist leader to fight for At this point, with mass protests growing, past French administrations would have climbed down Ten 74 Science and technology The Economist June 4th 2016 Zika and the Olympics An update on AIDS Should I stay or should I go? HIV’s slow retrenchment The battle against the human immunodeficiency virus continues T HE latest dispatch from the war on HIV, the “Global AIDS Update 2016”, just published by UNAIDS, the UN agency responsible for combating the virus, brings qualified good news Last year, it estimates, there were 1.1m AIDS-related deaths, down from a peak of 2m in 2005 and a figure of1.2m in 2014 Last year also saw 2.1m new infections, down from a peak of 3.4m in 1998 but up from 2014’s estimate of 2.0m By the end of 2015 some 17m people were taking anti-retroviral (ARV) drugs—2m more than the target number for that year, set by the UN in 2011 This accounts for the falling death rate Some hoped the drug roll-out might also lead to an increased fall-off in the rate of new infections That hope was based on the idea, experimentally demonstrated at small scale among cohabiting couples, that taking ARVs makes an infected individual less likely to pass the virus on There is, though, no sign of such an acceleration in the downward trend of new infections This year’s uptick aside, it has remained fairly steady since the turn of the century, despite the fraction of infected people on ARVs having risen from 3% in 2000 to 46% in 2015 The next UN target is that, by 2020, 90% of those infected should have been diagnosed and know their status, 90% of those so diagnosed should be on ARVs, and 90% of those on ARVs should have suppressed viral loads That is ambitious, but history suggests those in the field will rise to the challenge Keeping the pressure up High bound Worldwide, m Low bound 4.0 Estimate 20.0 New HIV infections, per year 3.5 17.5 People receiving antiretroviral therapy, total 3.0 15.0 2.5 12.5 2.0 10.0 1.5 1.0 7.5 AIDS-related deaths, per year 5.0 0.5 2.5 0 1990 95 2000 05 10 15 Source: UNAIDS problems are fraud and the academies of science and engineering themselves In 2014 China’s anti-corruption watchdog said it had “uncovered fraud in research grants managed by China’s Ministry of Science and Technology” In April the British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology retracted an article by scientists from Dalian University, in Liaoning province, because it suspected the peer-review process had been subverted In 2015 BioMed Central retracted more than 40 papers submitted by Chinese researchers The prevalence of fraud reflects poor oversight and a dodgy research culture Both are rooted in problems in the academies, which are dominated by bureaucrats rather than research scientists In 2010 two Chinese university deans wrote in Nature’s rival Science that “to obtain major grants in China, it is an open secret that doing good research is not as important as schmoozing with powerful bureaucrats and their favourite experts” That is starting to change The Academy of Sciences altered its criteria for membership in 2014, requiring prospective members to be nominated by other academicians or academic institutions and to be elected by all members Previously, nominations could come from ministries, the Communist Party, the army and even from companies; the electorate was restricted and thus easier to influence But the system remains hierarchical and politicised Even Ms Tu fell foul of it Having begun her career in the Cultural Revolution, when scientists were deemed one of “nine black categories”, she does not have a doctorate and did not study abroad She has been turned down by the Academy of Sciences four times Chinese science has a way to go before it can lead the world in quality, as well as quantity A call to stop or move the Olympics because of Zika is mistaken A S THE Olympic torch relay nears Rio de Janeiro in the countdown to the games supposed to start there on August 5th, a proposal to postpone or move the event has ignited controversy An open letter posted online on May 27th and now signed by more than 200 academics and health experts, mostly bioethicists, argues that holding the games as planned is “unethical” because it will speed up the spread of the Zika virus The reasons the experts put forward, however, not warrant such drastic action Most Zika infections pass with no symptoms Though the virus can cause a neurological condition that may lead to temporary paralysis or death, this is rare Zika is at its most dangerous during pregnancy, because it can cause severe brain damage to the unborn baby Pregnant women are therefore advised to avoid travel to areas where Zika is being transmitted, including Rio de Janeiro That is not the letter-writers’ concern, though They worry that many of the 500,000 foreigners expected to flock to Rio for the games will get infected, and then spread Zika back home But, though 500,000 is a huge number, it is less than 0.25% of all those who travel each year to places already affected by Zika, according to America’s Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) The World Health Organisation (WHO) agrees Cancelling or moving the Olympics will not significantly alter the spread of Zika, it said on May 28th The virus is now present in nearly 60 countries and territories, and people will continue to travel to and from these, games or no games Although it is impossible to predict how many of those visiting Rio for the Olympics will be infected, Mike Turner, director of infectious diseases at the Wellcome Trust, a British health charity, reckons the risk is “close to zero” for those who take the recommended precautions Such precautions are simple Visitors are most likely to catch Zika through the bite of Aedes aegypti, a mosquito that transmits the virus Wearing trousers and longsleeved shirts reduces the target area mosquitoes can attack and wearing repellent drives them away Sexual transmission of Zika, which is known to occur for up to two months after infection, is much rarer and condoms can prevent it Most fans and athletes will probably be diligent about slathering on repellent, and may even compromise their sartorial ele- The Economist June 4th 2016 gance to avoid the mosquitoes’ attentions Less certain is whether A aegypti will be a rare sight at Olympic venues, as promised It is a tricky creature to get rid of (the CDC’s director, Tom Frieden, calls it “the cockroach of mosquitoes”) Rio’s authorities have stepped up insecticide-spraying campaigns and the mopping-up of spots of stagnant water in which the insect can breed The state’s allotment of federal money for this task is 45% more than the amount it got in 2015 But El Niño has brought a summer much warmer and rainier than usual—so mosquitoes in Rio de Janeiro have been more plentiful So far this year, the number of cases there of dengue, another disease transmitted by A aegypti, have been nearly twice those in the same period last year Dengue rates, though, swing wildly from year to year depending on how rainy it is, so that does not necessarily mean mosquito control is ineffective And, as Wanderson Oliveira of the federal health ministry’s unit for monitoring and emergency response points out, mosquitoes will be much less Science and technology 75 of a problem when the games start because August is a dry month when the insects’ numbers fall “vertiginously” The authors of the open letter doubt the WHO’s impartiality to make the right call about Rio, suspecting it of secretly being in cahoots with the Olympics’ organisers and citing a now-expired agreement between the two to improve healthy lifestyles by way of evidence That smacks of paranoia A more sensible reason for jittery nerves is Brazil’s shaky relationship with the truth when it comes to promulgating official information Tourists and athletes might be more assured that Zika is under control if data relating to it were monitored by foreign experts working alongside local authorities, much as voting in many countries with rickety electoral systems is observed by outsiders At first, Mr Oliveira is a little indignant at the suggestion (“This didn’t happen in London [in 2012],” he says) but then he admits the idea could be considered “Any expert is welcome to get in touch with us,” he says Please form an orderly queue Avoiding sunburn Patched up How to avoid solar overexposure, and still get a tan S UN cream is a fickle friend It protects against burn-inducing ultraviolet (UV) light, but only for a period And the first most people know of when that period is up is the sickening sensation that their skin is starting to catch fire—by which time it is too late to act But Justin Gooding of the University of New South Wales, in Sydney, Australia, now thinks he has a solution for those who might otherwise risk overdoing it on Bondi Beach: a stick-on UV sensor that can be tuned to give warning when a new slap of protection would be advisable Dr Gooding’s invention, described in this month’s ACS Sensors, is based on titanium oxide This is a compound well known to shed high-energy electrons if hit by UV When those electrons interact with water and molecular oxygen, they generate reactive groups ofatoms called free-radicals Dr Gooding suspected that these radicals could be used to trigger changes in the sorts of dyes employed to colour food To test this idea, he and his colleagues filled the cartridges of an inkjet printer with a series of solutions consisting of three ingredients One was titanium dioxide The second was one of several food dyes, including lemon yellow and sunset yellow, green and blue The third was polyvinylpyrrolidone, a substance which bound the other two components together to form a suitable “ink” for printing The researchers then sprayed this ink onto sheets of paper, put those sheets under a lamp that mimicked the sun’s output, UV and all, and waited to see what happened As a control, they put similar sheets under the lamp when it was masked with a filter that intercepted the UV part of its output As they had hoped, all of the sheets ex- I was down by Bondi pier posed to the unfiltered light changed colour The changes most noticeable to the naked eye were that the green dye turned red and the blue turned yellow By contrast, the control sheets remained unaffected The principle established, the next question Dr Gooding and his colleagues needed to address was how to modulate the dyes’ responses so that they would give appropriate and timely warning of potential overexposure That task was made harder by the fact that darker skin and higher-factor sun cream permit longer safeexposure periods To start with, they tried tinkering with the mixture of ingredients in the ink This worked, but only to a point The maximum by which such tinkering could delay the colour change was half an hour Given that strong sun creams and darkly pigmented skin delay burn times by up to five hours, the researchers realised that they needed a different approach if they were going to create a useful product They therefore started experimenting with cheap, nontoxic UV-filtering films of various opacities, and found that the strongest of these could delay the sensor’s colour change by 9½ hours—nearly twice what was needed As a result, it is possible to work out, for any combination of skin tone and suncream protection factor (from ten to 50), what strength of filter is required to cause a particular colour change to happen sufficiently in advance of a burn beginning to form to provide useful warning The colour change is gradual, so in a commercial product a reference strip showing the warning colour would need to be included in the sensor, to let the wearer calibrate what was going on That done, though, the upshot would be something that could safely and easily be stuck onto the skin like a plaster, and could be printed in huge volumes at little cost After use it would leave behind a sensor-shaped patch of light-coloured skin But that is probably better than the look of lobster thermidor 76 Science and technology The Economist June 4th 2016 Black holes We want information Even Stephen Hawking sometimes turns out to be wrong Who better to put him right than himself? A RE black holes bald or hairy? On that strange and esoteric question may hang the future of the universe’s past The present, the past and the future are all connected by physical laws, a phenomenon called “causal determinism” With complete information about a system’s present, it ought therefore be possible to determine all its past and future states In theory, that applies to any system, up to and including the entire universe In 1976, however, an up-and-coming Cambridge-based cosmologist called Stephen Hawking challenged this idea by showing that blackholes (which are part of the universe, albeit a rather odd part) should evaporate over the course of time, and eventually vanish That would cause information about anything they had swallowed (and thus a part of the universe’s past) to be lost, meaning the future could not be determined, even in principle The naive might think this information loss had happened already, as a consequence of the swallowing But even though it is inside the hole the information continues to exist for as long as the hole does Causal determinism is not violated A black hole’s disappearance, though, really would mean the information’s loss This, in turn, would mean the end ofcausal determinism—and with it the assumptions which underpin the whole of modern physics Fortunately, 40 years on from his pushy original paper, the now-venerable Dr Hawking thinks he has found a way to permit black holes to evaporate while preserving causal determinism Soft particles, the magic ingredient he invokes, form ethereal hairy coats around such holes These retain records of what has been swallowed and then imprint this information on the radiation that is carrying away the black hole’s substance and causing its evaporation In a manner analogous to the modulation of a television or radio signal, that radiation (known as Hawking radiation in honour of the man who conceived of it) carries data about a black hole’s meals out into space even after the hole itself is defunct Causal determinism is therefore preserved Soft particles are the area of expertise of Andrew Strominger of Harvard University, one of Dr Hawking’s co-authors on the causal-determinism-rescuing paper, to be published next week in Physical Review Letters A soft particle is one that has virtually no energy Dr Strominger showed a few years ago that the vacuum of space teems with them The calculations he, Dr Hawking and Malcolm Perry, also at Cambridge, have made suggest that when matter falls into black holes it leaves ghostly traces in the form of two sorts of soft particle—photons (the particles of light) and gravitons (the particles, still hypothetical, that theory suggests transmit gravity)— which then hang around the event horizon, the hole’s point ofno return The number and distribution of these particles holds information that would otherwise be lost when a blackhole evaporated away Hair transplant The Hawking radiation itself is a consequence of the fact that a vacuum is not actually empty space Rather, because of quantum uncertainty, pairs of particles (one of matter and one of antimatter) are constantly popping in and out of existence in it These particles (which are distinct from the soft variety whose emergence Dr Strominger studied) normally annihilate each other soon after they pop up, leaving nothing behind However, if they appear at a black hole’s event horizon one member of the pair may be pulled in while the other is not The stranded particle is thus “forced” to become real and acquire energy, which it takes from the black hole That reduces the hole’s mass (because energy and mass are equivalent, by E=mc2) Given enough such events, the hole will vanish The wrinkle the new paper introduces is that the behaviour of the now-real Hawking-radiation particle is affected by the soft particles it encounters when it materialises This causes the modulation that preserves causal determinism Previous attempts to explain the Hawking radiation while retaining causal determinism have involved throwing some other cherished physical axiom overboard One jettisoned the principle of equivalence between acceleration and gravity that lies at the heart of general relativity; others violated aspects of quantum field theory, which describes the interactions of subatomic particles The cure, in other words, was worse than the disease The soft-particle explanation does not this It fits with all established laws of physics As yet, the new explanation is incomplete So far, the researchers have only computed the effects caused by one property of matter falling into a black hole, its electric charge They have not shown the effect of its mass, which would also be important Their calculations therefore account only for part of the information that is lost But they have established a principle that may lead to a full accounting of the matter That would let physicists sleep easy in their beds, in the knowledge that reality is once again behaving, at least approximately, how they think it ought to Jumping to attention The peppered moth is one of the most famous animals in evolutionary biology Victorian collections show how a melanic version of this normally speckled species spread through sooty urban areas because its black wings camouflaged resting moths from hungry birds (see picture above) The exact genetic change involved, however, remained elusive But, in a paper in Nature, Arjen van’t Hof of Liverpool University, in England, and his colleagues, say they have nailed it down It is a transposable element—a piece of DNA that leaps from place to place in the genome In this case it has leapt into a gene called cortex, which controls cell division That promotes cortex’s expression Just why this makes wings black, though, has yet to be worked out The Economist June 4th 2016 77 Books and arts Also in this section 78 Johnson: Language peeves 79 Living to be 100 79 The importance of grit 80 The new Tate Modern For daily analysis and debate on books, arts and culture, visit Economist.com/culture Developing economies The long road Making sense of euphoria and despair about emerging markets G LOBALISATION has gone into reverse gear Trade volumes have stagnated and the value of the capital flows sloshing around the world has dropped by over half since 2007 The West is angry and inward-looking Disappointment festers in the emerging world In the boom years between 2003 and 2010 it appeared that a new era of openness and global supply chains would help emerging countries to grow at turbocharged rates for decades, closing the gap with the rich world Today that idea is out of fashion Brazil’s economy is shrinking, China’s debts are terrifying and Russia is a rusting autocracy Emerging countries are growing at 4%, half as fast as in 2006 Into the wreckage steps Ruchir Sharma, a fund manager and author of the bestselling “Breakout Nations”, which came out in 2012 His new book, “The Rise and Fall of Nations”, has three aims: to assess the crash; to dismantle the analysis that led investors and economists to get overexcited; and to offer a new framework for thinking about emerging countries The result is ambitious It covers four-fifths of the world’s population and 40% of its GDP, and though it is sometimes rambling, it is also entertaining, acute and disarmingly honest Instead of pious statements about poverty, or portentous mutterings on the importance of American leadership, Mr Sharma sees the world from the ruthless The Rise and Fall of Nations: Forces of Change in the Post-Crisis World By Ruchir Sharma W.W Norton; 466 pages; $27.95 Allen Lane; £25 and restless perspective of an investor The emerging-market slump, he argues, is not over yet Commodity-exporting economies, such as Russia, Brazil and South Africa, have yet to adjust fully Some multinational firms cannot admit that their investments abroad will not return a decent profit To counteract the global slowdown after the crisis of 2008-09, most emerging economies went on borrowing binges China, in Mr Sharma’s view, is almost certain to face a crunch of some kind No country, he says, has “ever survived a debt binge of such a scale without suffering a severe economic slowdown” Plenty of executives and forecasters mistook a commodity-driven boom for a step-change in long-term prospects On paper there are some reasons why GDP per person might increase much faster in emerging economies than in rich ones: for example, they might be able to leapfrog generations of technology, learning from rich countries’ experience But history suggests that sustaining fast growth is terribly hard in practice Since 1945 most countries’ spurts of success have been followed by periods of mediocre growth or worse Some forecasters then compounded this error by making projections over a dizzyingly long time At the height of the emerging-market boom, it became routine for bosses and bankers to discuss the relative size of the GDPs of America and India and China in 2050 Mr Sharma thinks that looking beyond a horizon of between five and ten years is useless, and even then things are murky What organising idea should replace the belief that the emerging world will one day converge with the rich world? Mr Sharma’s proposal is cycles Countries’ prospects rise and fall over cycles of up to ten years Spurts of fast growth contain the seeds of their own destruction: exuberant investors sponsor frothy projects and politicians become complacent After a slump banks and firms eventually purge their balance sheets and reformers are emboldened, allowing growth to pick up again It is hardly a novel way of thinking about the world, but Mr Sharma has ten tests for working out where countries are on this rollercoaster ride For example, a country at the beginning of a rising cycle will often have an expanding manufacturing base, stable debts, low inflation, a cheap currency that boosts exports, a state that builds bridges but does not meddle, few crony billionaires, and hungry leaders who have not been in office long enough to become lazy or corrupt For investors, the trick is to bet on a country before the next cycle of hype begins (and then sell before it peaks) Fittingly, Mr Sharma is keen on countries that few investors think about much: Pakistan and Romania, for example He has a knack for sharp comparisons between countries Australia’s history of high immigration is contrasted with Japan’s insularity The puny trade links 78 Books and arts between India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka are compared with the umbilical cords that bind South-East Asia and which have made it richer He is pithy, too In countries with rotten financial systems, “a shake-up of banking is a shake-up of society” China’s periodic attempts to perk up its economy are like watching “a ping-pong ball bouncing down stairs” The book has two limitations First, it is an unashamedly business-class view of the world Mr Sharma name-drops and networks like mad, often to entertaining effect Visiting China less than a year after the collapse of Lehman Brothers, he finds The Economist June 4th 2016 an air of “triumphant self-satisfaction” In 2015 Najib Razak, Malaysia’s prime minister, gets confused while addressing a room full of investors in New York, despite an aide’s attempts to keep him on-message Yet there is little first-hand reporting on the slower currents of change in the emerging world—such as the shift from the countryside to cities—that continue regardless of where currencies and shares trade The second flaw is that Mr Sharma doesn’t tackle whether it makes sense for most people to compare countries as he does His point is that although no grand theory explains the world, an experienced observer can make informed guesses about which places are on the up or in decline This is a useful skill for a portfolio manager, shifting money around the world But it is of less use to people in government, or to companies, whose time horizons are longer If Mr Sharma is right that global capital flows will remain depressed, and that developing economies face a pedestrian future, then the hot money chasing them will recede—as, perhaps, will the influence of famous fund managers Until then, Mr Sharma’s book is a fine guide to the great emerging market boom and bust Johnson Get over it When it comes to language, some users are more peevish than others W HO doesn’t have their own little language peeve? “Literally” should be reserved for literal situations; there are plenty of ways to intensify a statement rather than saying, “We literally walked a million miles.” “To beg the question” is an old term from logic that means “to assume one’s own conclusion in an argument”; today, most people use it to mean “to prompt the question” Two clauses connected by a comma, the “comma splice”, is jarring in good writing; people should avoid it But some people take peeves to another level entirely They choose words or phrases that have a widely understood, long-standing second meaning, and treat the second, perhaps metaphorical or new meaning, with a shocked seriousness that should be reserved for the apocalypse Someone has recently created a new Twitter account, @over_morethan, dedicated to the idea that “over” may not be used with numbers: one thing may physically only sit over another thing, in this view But to write, as The Economist has recently, of “over two-thirds”, “over 150 fellows of the Royal Society” or “over a year” is to take a pure preposition and debase it with metaphorical usage The purists would say that these should be “more than two- thirds”, “more than 150 fellows” and “more than a year”  And it wasn’t just @over_morethan Using “over” with numbers was even banned by the Associated Press (AP) stylebook, which many American newspapers use as their own, and which thus gives it a kind of sanctified status According to one account, there was an audible gasp at the meeting of the American Copy Editors’ Society when AP announced that it was abandoning the “rule” Never mind that, as Jonathan Owen, an editor, pointed out, languages from Swedish to an- cient Greek can use their “over” preposition in exactly the same way, or that “over” has been used like this for centuries in English Some people are quite simply attached to this pseudo-rule—no “over” with numbers—and they have treated AP’s more-than-justifiable abandonment as a lowering of intellectual standards  Then take Bryan Henderson, a man who has “corrected” tens of thousands of Wikipedia articles, removing “comprised of” His rationale was that a “whole comprises the parts”, so the phrase “comprised of” is meaningless gobbledygook probably inspired by confusion with “composed of” If it is meaningless, a lot of native speakers seem to disagree: the phrase turns up almost 4,000 hits on The Economist’s website and 63m results on Google Odd that a meaningless phrase can be used so meaningfully by so many people  The case for making language rules based on how speakers actually use their language—rather than a dreamed-up ideal for how it should be used—is straightforward Language is an arbitrary system of signs agreed on by a community If English-speakers agree that the sound “dog” should go with a barking four-legged mammal, then that ends the discussion about what a “dog” is.  Most English-speakers have no problem with “over” plus a number The anonymous Twitter pundit has clearly enjoyed herself (it turned out to be a woman, even though in Johnson’s experience it is men who complain most about grammar), correcting the New York Times, Time magazine, Newsweek, along with AP, for using “over” with a number It does not seem to have occurred to her to wonder why such a variety of publications—which agree on barely anything else—should agree that “over” can be used with a number And they can hardly be accused of confusing their readers The same could be said for the thousands of Wikipedia editors that Mr Henderson has corrected—nearly all highly educated native-speakers keen on sharing knowledge They know their readers will understand; who says they cannot use their language properly?  Language change happens slowly “Over” with a number seems to have ancient roots; “comprised of” began rising in English books more than (or is that “over”) a century ago;  and nobody is confused by either Of Johnson’s own peeves, it seems that careful writers still mostly use “literally” literally—something worth fighting for But “to beg the question” meaning “to prompt the question” is fully mainstream It is all well and good to oppose a change that has not yet taken hold, or one that still confuses people But when the language has truly moved on, so should its guardians The Economist June 4th 2016 Human life Live long and prosper The 100-Year Life: Living and Working in an Age of Longevity By Lynda Gratton & Andrew Scott Bloomsbury; 264 pages; $28 and £18.99 I T USED to be rare to live to 100 But the progress of science has meant that over the past two centuries every year has added three months to average life expectancy, at least in rich countries If “The 100-Year Life” by Lynda Gratton and Andrew Scott is correct, half the children born in the rich world today are likely to live to 100 Predicting future life expectancies is not easy Some say there are fundamental limits to the continued extension of the average lifespan, and that further gains may become disproportionately hard to achieve It is certainly true that reducing child mortality or cardiac diseases in middle age—the low-hanging fruit of increased longevity—have all been reached How to look after all these elderly folk is a different problem Governments around the world are already struggling to support growing numbers of retired people who depend on a shrinking working population Eighteen OECD countries have raised pension ages At the same time, workers are being asked to dig deeper into their own pockets None of this is enough The book suggests that even greater difficulties lie ahead Looking at three hypothetical people, born in different eras, the authors map out the scale of the problem and what it might mean for a working life Jack, born in 1945, worked for 42 years and was retired for eight He had to save only a small percentage of his salary in a pension every month, which was topped up by the government and by his company Jimmy was born in 1971 and has a life expectancy of 85 If he works for 44 years and retires for 20, he will be likely to need to save a whopping 17% of his income during his working life From here the numbers grow more unsettling Jane, born in 1998, will need to finance 35 years of retirement on the same 44 years of work This will mean she must save 25% of her income—an improbable sum given other commitments such as mortgages, university fees and child care The upshot of all of this continued extension of longevity is that working to 70 or even past 80 may not only become less unusual, but may be necessary in the future While one can certainly quibble with the assumptions built into each of these scenarios, the scale of the problem is perfectly clear It is going to be nearly impossible for workers to save enough money during the current span of a working life to Books and arts 79 fund retirements of increasing length And if people have to work longer, it is unclear whether their education or the places where they work are geared to support such a future How best to adjust education so it prepares the youth of today for longer working lives and many different jobs? Online courses and retraining are becoming increasingly popular—and increasingly important—for this reason But universities may need to rethink the model of handing a big dollop of education once, in youth, and forcing graduates to repay that cost over decades If people must retrain throughout their lives, as well as save more for retirement, a costly, one-shot education at the start might become an unmanageable burden The authors use a little too much management-speak Even so, the book is useful Too few people are considering the issue that if the world is unprepared, longevity will be both a gift and a curse Psychology Character-driven Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance By Angela Duckworth Scribner; 352 pages; $28 Vermilion; £20 F RIEDRICH NIETZSCHE, a German philosopher, once stated that there was a universal tendency to see success as the result of innate talent, rather than effort Today it is still common to think of the straight-A pupil as having a “gift” for learning, or of the sports star as miraculously skilful Angela Duckworth, a professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylva- The test will be when the gloves come off nia, believes that talent is overrated More important, she suggests, is a blend of persistence and passion—or “grit” “Our potential is one thing,” she writes “What we with it is quite another.” That character matters is not a new idea But “Grit”, Ms Duckworth’s first book, is part of a broader trend which is influencing organisations from sports teams to schools Over the past two decades more and more scholars have analysed traits like curiosity and self-control Such faculties are at least as important as raw cognitive ability to grades and pay, they say And since these attributes are seen as independent of and more malleable than intelligence, they are a voguish area for education reformers This year, for example, nine school districts in California will begin testing pupils on their character “Talent counts, [but] effort counts twice,” insists Ms Duckworth in the first and best part of her book Much of her work is based on her Grit Scale, a questionnaire which asks people how much they agree with such statements as “I am diligent I never give up.” At West Point, an American military college, grit scores predict dropouts better than academic records Grittier salespeople stay in their jobs, grittier swimmers win more medals and grittier pupils persevere with university Some critics have suggested that Ms Duckworth’s work is a rebranding of earlier research on conscientiousness She argues, however, that grit is about more than that It also involves finding and fostering a purpose How to build grit is less well understood, she concedes “Goof around” until you find something you love, she suggests, and then practise so that it becomes a habit Parents, teachers and bosses can help by giving praise for effort and displaying grit themselves Ms Duckworth’s own family obeys the “hard thing rule”: everyone must pick a difficult task, like learning the piano, which they can abandon but only at a natural stopping point, say the end of term She adds homilies of successful people such as Jamie Dimon, chief executive of JPMorgan Chase, and TaNehisi Coates, a writer, who she says are “paragons of grit” All this is mildly inspirational, if vague The author’s relentless message simplifies a complex story Traumatic childhoods, bad parenting, awful schools and a lack of extra-curricular opportunities can make it harder for children to develop grit; success for poor pupils is not simply a matter of them pulling themselves together Ms Duckworth knows that She has warned schools against grading pupils on grit in high-stakes tests In 2013 she co-founded the Character Lab, a research centre which tries to ensure that policies to encourage grit are based on science She has a tough task ahead, but is determined to see it through That’s grit for you 80 Books and arts The Economist June 4th 2016 Contemporary art museums Home of the brave It all started with Tate Modern T HE view north from the top of Tate Modern’s new twisted ten-storey extension (pictured), which opens on June 17th, is among the finest in London: a perfectly aligned panorama of St Paul’s Cathedral in all its Baroque beauty And such is the democracy of the museum that the public will get to enjoy it too, from a generous balcony that wraps right around the building They won’t have to pay They won’t even have to look at any art on the way up “Museums now are places where people come to meet each other and have a conversation and a good time,” says Sir Nicholas Serota, director of the Tate Galleries “I’m happy about that.” The eating and meeting places have been part of Tate’s appeal ever since this former power station, converted by Herzog and de Meuron, a Swiss firm, opened in 2000 People flock to the projects in the Turbine Hall, among them Carsten Holler’s scream-inducing slides and Olafur Eliasson’s Weather Project emulating the glory of the rising sun With over 5m visitors a year, twice the number going to the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, and with only half the exhibition space, an extension quickly became inevitable Tate Modern’s original permanent exhibition was sniffed at for its patchy con- tent and occasional holes This forced the gallery to put on thematic rather than chronological displays, some of them quite baffling But over the past 16 years, Frances Morris, first as a curator and now as director of Tate Modern, has been building up a wide-ranging collection, roaming first through Latin America and then on to the rest of the world Sculptures by Saloua Raouda Choucair from Lebanon and the modernist paintings of Ibrahim El-Salahi from Sudan would be out of Tate’s reach if the board hadn’t started buying before the market caught on “It’s a way of collecting geared to what they could afford, but it’s ended up being a lot of good work from under-represented areas,” says Matthew Slotover, cofounder of the Frieze art fairs “It now feels very forward looking MoMA [with its predominantly American and European collection] is struggling to catch up.” Ms Morris and Sir Nicholas, on the other hand, would prefer it to be seen as a new way to look at the history of art and a rethink of the modernist canon, rather than a matter of economics “Modernism didn’t just happen in Paris, or New York,” says Ms Morris Modernism even happened in London, though it wasn’t much loved there But by the time Tate Modern emerged, YBAs (for Young British Artists) like Tracey Emin and Damien Hirst, who had been snaffled up by Charles Saatchi in the 1980s and 1990s, had finally created an appetite for contemporary art in a city which, thanks to Margaret Thatcher’s financial deregulation in 1986, was becoming very much richer It was Tate, though, that put London on the international art map, with a string of after-effects: the Frieze art fair which arrived in 2002, a proliferation of contemporary-art dealers and eventually the arrival of big-name American galleries like Pace and David Zwirner that could no longer avoid having a presence in the city Thin, besuited and outwardly cool, Sir Nicholas describes his job as “balancing the books and being creative and brave”, but his strongest play has been to develop enduring relationships around the world and create an enviable network of influence, balancing a subtle showmanship with a love of art Cy Twombly, an American artist who died in 2011, left three swirly paintings from his Bacchus series (worth in the region of £30m at auction) to the Tate, based solely on his long-standing friendship with the director Board members such as Howard Davies, a banker, and Janet de Botton, a well-known collector, step down, but never really leave When Hannah Rothschild was appointed chairman of the National Gallery, she stayed on as the “liaison” trustee between the two institutions “You don’t turn down a chance to keep learning from the master,” she says of Tate’s boss It is hard to believe that when Tate Modern opened, its senior team worried that the Turbine Hall was too big and wondered if people would come If they could have seen into the future, they would have observed what could be called the “Tate effect” When the new San Francisco Museum ofModern Art opened last month, its director Neal Benezra described a ground floor space with windows onto the street as “our Turbine Hall” It is doubtful that the HangarBicocca, a 15,000-square-metre former factory in Milan which opened in 2004, would have happened without Tate’s example (its curatorial programme, incidentally, is currently in the hands of a former Tate Modern director, Vicente Todoli) Or the Power Station in Shanghai Or the massive Art Mill in Qatar And perhaps, when the Guggenheim Museum of Art made its whole interior over to a James Turrell light installation in 2013, that was the Tate effect too Over 5,000 visitors came each day (more than any other exhibition in New York that year), lying on their backs on the floor, selfie-ing furiously as the colours moved through the rainbow It is interesting to see Tate Modern broaden its brief, but many people go for the entertainment rather than for a lesson in art history Could that be the ultimate Tate effect? Courses The Economist June 4th 2016 81 82 Tenders Courses Appointments Publications Stories of Three Unique Years Henry Schueftan, 101 years old WWII US Army Vet at Amazon.com To advertise within the classified section, contact: UK/Europe Martin Cheng - Tel: (44-20) 7576 8408 martincheng@economist.com United States Richard Dexter - Tel: (212) 554-0662 richarddexter@economist.com Asia ShanShan Teo - Tel: (+65) 6428 2673 shanshanteo@economist.com Middle East & Africa Philip Wrigley - Tel: (44-20) 7576 8091 philipwrigley@economist.com The Economist June 4th 2016 Tenders The Economist June 4th 2016 83 84 The Economist June 4th 2016 Economic and financial indicators Economic data % change on year ago Economic data product Gross domestic latest qtr* 2016† Industrial production latest United States +2.0 Q1 +0.8 +1.8 -1.1 Apr +4.5 +6.5 +6.0 Apr China +6.7 Q1 +1.7 +0.5 -3.5 Apr Japan nil Q1 +1.4 +1.9 -0.3 Mar Britain +2.0 Q1 +2.4 +1.6 -0.2 Mar +1.1 Q1 Canada +2.1economies, +1.5 +0.2 Euro areaStatistics +1.5 Q1on 42 plusMara Q1 at manufacturing -0.7 +1.1 +2.5 Mar Austria closer +1.6 look activi+0.9 +1.3 +1.2 Mar Belgium +1.5 Q1 ty +2.6 +1.3 -0.8 Mar France +1.4 Q1 +2.7 +1.5 +0.2 Mar Germany +1.6 Q1 -1.9 +1.2 -4.0 Mar Greece -1.3 Q1 +1.0 +1.0 +0.5 Mar Italy +1.0 Q1 +1.9 +1.5 +0.3 Mar Netherlands +1.4 Q1 +3.1 +2.8 -1.7 Mar Spain +3.4 Q1 +2.0 +2.7 +0.7 Mar Czech Republic +4.3 Q4 +2.2 +1.3 -2.6 Mar Denmark +0.1 Q1 +4.0 +1.5 -5.7 Mar Norway +0.7 Q1 -0.4 +3.5 +6.0 Apr Poland +2.5 Q1 na -1.3 +0.6 Apr Russia -1.2 Q1 Sweden +4.2 Q1 +2.0 +3.4 +5.5 Mar +0.4 +1.1 +1.0 Q1 Switzerland +0.7 Q1 na +3.3 +4.7 Mar Turkey +5.7 Q4 +4.3 +2.5 +4.8 Q1 Australia +3.1 Q1 -1.8 +2.0 -1.3 Q4 Hong Kong +0.8 Q1 +9.6 +7.5 +0.1 Mar India +7.9 Q1 na +5.1 +3.4 Mar Indonesia +4.9 Q1 na +5.5 +2.8 Mar Malaysia +4.2 Q1 +6.7 Mar Pakistan +5.5 2015** na +4.8 +4.5 +6.2 +7.8 Mar Philippines +6.9 Q1 +0.2 +2.5 +2.9 Apr Singapore +1.8 Q1 +2.1 +2.5 -2.8 Apr South Korea +2.8 Q1 +3.1 +2.1 -4.1 Apr Taiwan -0.7 Q1 +3.8 +3.5 +1.5 Apr Thailand +3.2 Q1 +2.0 -0.4 -2.5 Oct Argentina +2.3 Q2 -1.1 -3.7 -11.3 Mar Brazil -5.4 Q1 +5.3 +3.1 -3.4 Apr Chile +2.0 Q1 +2.4 +3.5 +1.3 Mar Colombia +3.3 Q4 +3.3 +2.4 -2.0 Mar Mexico +2.6 Q1 -8.4 -7.0 na Venezuela -8.8 Q4~ na +3.9 -10.9 Mar Egypt +4.0 Q4 Israel +1.7 Q1 +0.8 +3.5 -0.5 Mar Saudi Arabia +3.5 2015 na +2.8 na +0.4 +0.8 -1.5 Mar South Africa +0.5 Q4 Current-account balance Consumer prices Unemployment latest 12 % of GDP latest 2016† rate, % months, $bn 2016† +1.1 Apr +2.3 Apr -0.3 Apr +0.3 Apr +1.7 Apr -0.1 May +0.5 Apr +2.2 May -0.1 May +0.1 May -1.3 Apr -0.3 May nil Apr -0.9 May +0.6 Apr nil Apr +3.2 Apr -1.0 May +7.2 Apr +0.8 Apr -0.4 Apr +6.6 Apr +1.3 Q1 +2.7 Apr +5.4 Apr +3.3 May +2.1 Apr +3.2 May +1.1 Apr -0.5 Apr +0.8 May +1.9 Apr +0.5 May — *** +9.3 Apr +4.2 Apr +7.9 Apr +2.5 Apr na +10.3 Apr -0.9 Apr +4.2 Apr +6.2 Apr +1.2 +1.8 +0.2 +0.6 +1.5 +0.2 +1.1 +1.1 +0.2 +0.3 +0.5 +0.2 +0.5 -0.5 +1.4 +0.7 +2.3 +1.4 +8.2 +0.8 -0.7 +8.2 +1.7 +2.6 +5.2 +4.3 +2.8 +5.1 +2.6 +1.1 +1.3 +1.0 +2.4 — +8.3 +3.6 +4.1 +3.1 +181 +9.4 +1.2 +3.8 +6.4 5.0 Apr 4.0 Q1§ 3.2 Apr 5.1 Feb†† 7.1 Apr 10.2 Apr 5.8 Apr 8.7 Apr 9.9 Apr 6.1 May 24.2 Feb 11.7 Apr 7.8 Apr 20.1 Apr 5.7 Apr§ 4.3 Apr 4.7 Mar‡‡ 9.5 Apr§ 5.9 Apr§ 7.3 Apr§ 3.5 Apr 10.9 Feb§ 5.7 Apr 3.4 Apr‡‡ 4.9 2013 5.5 Q1§ 3.5 Mar§ 5.9 2015 5.8 Q1§ 1.9 Q1 3.9 Apr§ 4.0 Apr 1.0 Apr§ 5.9 Q3§ 11.2 Apr§ 6.4 Apr§‡‡ 9.0 Apr§ 3.9 Apr 6.0 Dec§ 12.7 Q1§ 4.9 Apr 5.7 2014 26.7 Q1§ -484.1 Q4 +293.5 Q1 +151.1 Mar -146.9 Q4 -47.6 Q1 +357.1 Mar +9.6 Q4 -0.1 Dec -20.6 Mar‡ +292.3 Mar +1.1 Mar +41.4 Mar +68.8 Q4 +17.1 Mar +1.5 Q4 +18.8 Mar +29.3 Q1 -2.0 Mar +51.3 Q1 +29.2 Q4 +75.9 Q4 -29.5 Mar -62.3 Q1 +9.6 Q4 -22.6 Q4 -18.2 Q1 +7.0 Q1 -2.4 Q1 +8.4 Dec +54.8 Q1 +103.1 Apr +74.8 Q1 +39.6 Q1 -15.9 Q4 -34.1 Apr -4.7 Q1 -18.9 Q4 -30.5 Q1 -17.8 Q3~ -16.8 Q4 +13.8 Q4 -53.5 Q4 -13.6 Q4 -2.7 +2.8 +3.8 -4.7 -2.8 +2.8 +2.5 +0.8 -0.3 +7.6 +2.1 +1.9 +9.9 +1.0 -0.1 +6.4 +11.2 -2.0 +3.7 +6.0 +9.5 -4.5 -4.1 +2.6 -1.0 -2.4 +2.6 -0.9 +3.6 +20.6 +7.3 +12.4 +2.7 -2.3 -1.6 -1.4 -5.2 -2.8 -1.5 -2.3 +4.2 -1.8 -4.1 Budget Interest balance rates, % % of GDP 10-year gov't 2016† bonds, latest -2.5 -3.0 -6.2 -3.6 -1.6 -1.9 -1.9 -2.4 -3.5 +0.4 -3.9 -2.5 -1.6 -3.5 -1.5 -2.8 +7.2 -2.0 -2.5 -0.5 +0.3 -1.8 -2.0 -0.4 -3.7 -1.9 -3.7 -4.7 -1.9 +0.9 +0.4 -0.9 -2.2 -2.8 -5.4 -1.8 -1.9 -3.0 -14.4 -9.8 -2.5 -9.3 -3.3 1.84 2.77§§ -0.12 1.55 1.30 0.14 0.50 0.49 0.48 0.14 7.28 1.39 0.36 1.50 0.54 0.43 1.37 3.14 9.04 0.77 -0.36 9.89 2.30 1.32 7.49 7.80 3.94 8.03††† 4.43 2.22 1.76 0.82 2.30 na 13.01 4.58 8.00 6.15 11.17 na 1.78 na 9.35 Currency units, per $ Jun 1st year ago 6.58 110 0.69 1.31 0.90 0.90 0.90 0.90 0.90 0.90 0.90 0.90 0.90 24.2 6.66 8.32 3.93 66.9 8.30 0.99 2.95 1.38 7.77 67.4 13,660 4.14 105 46.7 1.38 1,193 32.6 35.7 14.0 3.60 694 3,118 18.5 9.99 8.88 3.86 3.75 15.6 6.20 125 0.66 1.25 0.92 0.92 0.92 0.92 0.92 0.92 0.92 0.92 0.92 25.2 6.84 7.98 3.78 53.3 8.59 0.95 2.68 1.31 7.76 63.7 13,223 3.68 102 44.5 1.35 1,110 30.7 33.6 9.00 3.18 623 2,542 15.5 6.30 7.60 3.87 3.75 12.3 Source: Haver Analytics *% change on previous quarter, annual rate †The Economist poll or Economist Intelligence Unit estimate/forecast §Not seasonally adjusted ‡New series ~2014 **Year ending June ††Latest months ‡‡3-month moving average §§5-year yield ***Official number not yet proved to be reliable; The State Street PriceStats Inflation Index, March 34.88%; year ago 27.1% †††Dollar-denominated bonds The Economist June 4th 2016 Markets Index Jun 1st United States (DJIA) 17,789.7 China (SSEA) 3,049.5 Japan (Nikkei 225) 16,955.7 Britain (FTSE 100) 6,191.9 Canada (S&P TSX) 14,063.5 Euro area (FTSE Euro 100) 1,027.8 Euro area (EURO STOXX 50) 3,038.8 Austria (ATX) 2,222.1 Belgium (Bel 20) 3,504.3 France (CAC 40) 4,475.4 Germany (DAX)* 10,204.4 Greece (Athex Comp) 645.1 Italy (FTSE/MIB) 17,810.9 Netherlands (AEX) 446.8 Spain (Madrid SE) 898.7 Czech Republic (PX) 888.2 Denmark (OMXCB) 896.7 Hungary (BUX) 26,989.6 Norway (OSEAX) 665.2 Poland (WIG) 44,700.7 Russia (RTS, $ terms) 890.5 Sweden (OMXS30) 1,356.8 Switzerland (SMI) 8,185.5 Turkey (BIST) 77,034.9 Australia (All Ord.) 5,395.2 Hong Kong (Hang Seng) 20,761.0 India (BSE) 26,713.9 Indonesia (JSX) 4,839.7 Malaysia (KLSE) 1,626.5 Pakistan (KSE) 36,496.2 Singapore (STI) 2,790.5 South Korea (KOSPI) 1,982.7 Taiwan (TWI) 8,597.2 Thailand (SET) 1,415.8 Argentina (MERV) 12,626.0 Brazil (BVSP) 49,012.7 Chile (IGPA) 19,364.0 Colombia (IGBC) 9,667.0 Mexico (IPC) 45,557.6 Venezuela (IBC) 15,555.1 Egypt (Case 30) 7,572.4 Israel (TA-100) 1,252.3 Saudi Arabia (Tadawul) 6,458.0 South Africa (JSE AS) 53,518.4 Markets % change on Dec 31st 2015 one in local in $ week currency terms -0.3 +2.1 +2.1 +3.5 -17.7 -18.8 +1.2 -10.9 -2.1 -1.1 -0.8 -3.0 +0.1 +8.1 +14.7 -0.5 -6.1 -3.4 -0.7 -7.0 -4.4 -2.2 -7.3 -4.7 +0.4 -5.3 -2.6 -0.1 -3.5 -0.7 nil -5.0 -2.3 +0.5 +2.2 +5.1 -2.1 -16.8 -14.5 -0.1 +1.1 +4.0 -2.4 -6.9 -4.2 -0.2 -7.1 -4.5 +0.3 -1.1 +2.1 +1.1 +12.8 +16.8 -1.3 +2.5 +9.1 -4.3 -3.8 -3.4 -1.9 +7.8 +17.6 -0.8 -6.2 -4.7 +0.2 -7.2 -5.9 -2.0 +7.4 +6.4 -0.8 +0.9 +0.6 +1.9 -5.3 -5.5 +3.2 +2.3 +0.4 +1.4 +5.4 +6.3 -0.3 -3.9 -0.4 nil +11.2 +11.2 +0.9 -3.2 -0.3 +1.1 +1.1 -0.6 +2.4 +3.1 +3.8 +1.3 +9.9 +10.9 +2.0 +8.1 +0.2 -1.0 +13.1 +24.1 -0.8 +6.7 +9.0 -0.4 +13.1 +15.1 -0.3 +6.0 -1.2 +1.6 +6.6 na +0.4 +8.1 -4.7 +0.2 -4.8 -3.9 -0.9 -6.6 -6.5 -0.4 +5.6 +5.0 Economic and financial indicators 85 Manufacturing activity The latest round of manufacturing data from Markit, a research firm, paints a gloomy picture In America the purchasing managers’ index (PMI) dropped slightly in May to 50.7, its worst reading since 2009 and only just above the 50 threshold that indicates expansion in manufacturing activity The euro area’s PMI also fell, confounding expectations that activity there would recover after fresh monetary stimulus In Brazil manufacturing firms are shedding jobs at the fastest rate on record; China’s index was below 50 for the 15th month in a row Britain’s score edged up to 50.1 from April’s low of 49.4, but over a third of managers think that the possibility of Brexit has hurt their business 60 United States Britain 55 Euro area 50 China 45 Brazil J F M A M J J A S O N D J F M A M 2015 40 2016 *Based on a survey of purchasing executives A reading above/below 50 indicates manufacturing is generally expanding/contracting Sources: Markit; compared with the previous month CIPS; Caixin The Economist commodity-price index Other markets Other markets United States (S&P 500) United States (NAScomp) China (SSEB, $ terms) Japan (Topix) Europe (FTSEurofirst 300) World, dev'd (MSCI) Emerging markets (MSCI) World, all (MSCI) World bonds (Citigroup) EMBI+ (JPMorgan) Hedge funds (HFRX) Volatility, US (VIX) CDSs, Eur (iTRAXX)† CDSs, N Am (CDX)† Carbon trading (EU ETS) € Purchasing managers’ index* Index Jun 1st 2,099.3 4,952.3 348.7 1,362.1 1,350.3 1,672.9 807.2 402.2 932.5 757.4 1,162.1§ 14.2 74.3 77.4 6.0 % change on Dec 31st 2015 one in local in $ week currency terms +0.4 +2.7 +2.7 +1.2 -1.1 -1.1 +3.6 -17.1 -18.2 +1.4 -12.0 -3.3 -1.2 -6.1 -3.4 +0.2 +0.6 +0.6 +0.9 +1.6 +1.6 +0.3 +0.7 +0.7 +0.3 +7.2 +7.2 +0.2 +7.5 +7.5 +0.2 -1.0 -1.0 +13.9 +18.2 (levels) -1.1 -3.7 -0.9 -13.8 -12.4 -12.4 -1.0 -28.0 -25.9 Sources: Markit; Thomson Reuters *Total return index †Credit-default-swap spreads, basis points §May 31st Indicators for more countries and additional series, go to: Economist.com/indicators 2005=100 % change on The Economist commodity-price indexone one Dollar Index All Items Food Industrials All Nfa† May 24th May 31st* month year 135.5 162.3 137.3 164.4 +0.6 +4.0 -3.4 +4.4 107.6 109.2 -4.4 -13.5 115.7 104.1 117.9 105.4 -3.1 -5.0 -7.2 -16.2 171.6 +0.5 +1.7 153.3 +4.0 -3.4 1,214.3 -5.5 +1.9 48.9 +11.7 -20.3 Metals Sterling Index All items 168.7 Euro Index All items 150.9 Gold $ per oz 1,234.6 West Texas Intermediate $ per barrel 48.3 Sources: Bloomberg; CME Group; Cotlook; Darmenn & Curl; FT; ICCO; ICO; ISO; Live Rice Index; LME; NZ Wool Services; Thompson Lloyd & Ewart; Thomson Reuters; Urner Barry; WSJ *Provisional †Non-food agriculturals 86 The Economist June 4th 2016 Obituary Jane Fawcett the decoded message to see, one, if it was plausible German, and two, if it was of any interest (She had all of six months of German, picked up in dull Zurich, where she had been sent to get over her heartbreak that she was too tall to be a ballerina She soon went off to St Moritz instead.) In May 1941 they were all trying to trace the Germans’ best battleship, the Bismarck, which had just destroyed HMS Hood with the loss of more than 1,400 lives They thought it was still off Norway But the decoded message, spooling on a paper strip out of her machine, told her that the Bismarck was going to Brest The message was passed straight to Whitehall, and they were all “absolutely on their toes” to know what would come through next It was a distress call, as Hitler’s finest ship was sunk by the Royal Navy That earned her a rousing cheer in the Bletchley Park dining room The deb who sank the Bismarck Jane Fawcett (née Janet Caroline Hughes), codebreaker and saviour of Victorian buildings, died on May 21st, aged 95 A DRAUGHTY wooden hut, in the company of the best brains of Britain, was not quite the billet Jane Fawcett had imagined for herself At Miss Ironside’s School for Girls in Kensington the drill had been to sit up straight, learn to curtsey and not bother her head about exams, for Mr Right was bound to come along eventually After that, in 1939, she was a deb, parading en masse in a long white frock and an obvious sulk A complete waste of time, she thought Now, aged 19, just a chicken in the Bletchley Park code-breaking team, she was spending hours on a horrid hard chair, bent over a machine on a wobbly trestle table Lights down on strings, and a frightful old stove smoked in the middle of the room She was also saving the country, and it was terribly exciting But she could not breathe a word about that She had told her parents she was working for the Foreign Office They probably presumed it was as a typist, the kiss of death She had been recruited for Bletchley because the government then believed that the upper classes were better at keeping secrets Such an odd idea; she’d supposed the whole country was making common cause She often didn’t think much of aristocrats, despite moving in that world herself It was certainly a relief, though, when her father rescued her from her first lodgings, in a fume-ridden council house with a lorry-driver’s family Couldn’t have Jane there, he said She moved to Liscombe Park, the Elizabethan mansion of a family friend, where a much jollier time was had, though the trip to Bletchley down pitchblack country lanes for night shifts was hairy, to say the least Bletchley Park itself, a pile of best “lavatory Gothic” as she later described it, was sociable for a spy-centre; she danced Scottish reels on the lawn and sang madrigals Those gave brief respite from the gruelling days and nights spent tracking what the Germans were up to Her enemy was the German Enigma machine, a fiendish configuration of rotors which changed every day to set the code for Nazi military communications Bletchley Park’s code-breaker, known as the Bombe, was being ever-upgraded to compete with it by a group oflaconic, obsessive men (including Alan Turing, “desperately screwed up”, and Gordon Welchman, “always in the depths of the deepest thought”) Of course, they never noticed her Yet women, two-thirds of the workforce, were treated pretty much as equals at Bletchley They could notch up their own victories, and May 25th 1941 was hers The day was going as usual When an Enigma code was broken, she would check A red-brick victory And that was all she got No one outside the circle knew anything of it; they were all sworn to absolute secrecy for life That was sometimes very hard Her fiancé Ted, a naval officer, came back from the war a hero; she felt like an also-ran Nonetheless, not being one to brood, she became a professional singer for 15 years while bringing up two children; and then, unexpectedly, got the chance to charge off to war again Which, of course, she did This time the secret central command was in her own house in Kensington There, as secretary from 1964 to 1976, she ran the affairs of the Victorian Society Once more, it was David against Goliath: a small group led by another obsessive intellectual, Nikolaus Pevsner, fighting tooth and nail to persuade the whole government, the whole ofthe British public, all academe and almost all architects that Britain’s Victorian buildings were worth saving Once more, too, it was she who did most of the hard slog She wrote books, lectured, managed the rickety finances and tormented British Rail while the men, especially John Betjeman, the poet, grabbed the attention Well, never mind; she counted saving the rampant red-brick London Midland Hotel beside St Pancras as one of her special achievements And she was even happier to see how good it looked inside when it reopened in 2011 She had feared the redo would be very vulgar The refurbishment that pleased her less was of Hut at Bletchley At last, the great secret got out; the place became a museum, and she went to see it The lawns were too neat, the lights were wrong and the tables no longer wobbled It was all much too clean and rather sterile Still, that didn’t stop her seizing the hand of the Duchess of Cambridge and chatting away briskly for ages, as one well-bred gel to another, about the best time of her life, spent there Oracle #1 Cloud ERP 1,800 207 Oracle Cloud ERP Customers Workday Cloud ERP Customers “Oracle has their act together better than SAP” Aneel Bhusri, Workday CEO Midsize and large scale Enterprise Fusion ERP Cloud customers oracle.com/modern-finance or call 1.800.ORACLE.1 Copyright © 2016, Oracle and/or its affiliates All rights reserved Oracle and Java are registered trademarks of Oracle and/or its affiliates [...]... senior high That will mean growing numbers for whom social advancement will remain a distant dream 7 China 29 Remembering Tiananmen Squaring off HONG KONG A museum of China’s democracy movement in 1989 is in trouble O UTSIDE China, the bloodshed in Beijing on the night of June 3rd 1989 and the morning after was a defining moment in the country’s modern history The word “Tiananmen” instantly evokes those horrific... from Kinshasa, does not wish to be seen speaking with a white foreigner He fears attracting crowds of Indians, angered at the prospect that he might be complaining about India (he worries that similar, perhaps even angrier, crowds would appear if he were seen speaking to an Indian woman) He lives in one of the crowded villages that sprawl south through India’s capital, and the drive back to his windowless... and work in India, mainly in the large cities of Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore and Pune Some Indians argue, absurdly, that as fellow victims of Western prejudice, they cannot be guilty of racism Priyanka Chopra (now a star on American television) decries double standards in Hollywood— complaining that Indian actors are made to speak in stereotypical accents But she herself played a character in a Hindi film... for bureaucrats But China’s have to some extent been sidelined under the presidency of Xi Jinping, who has grabbed power for small party groups that he heads So, in Beijing, the Americans may be talking to the wrong people And, on their own side, Barack Obama’s presidency is ending China may have taken his cautious foreign policy into account in pushing its claims in the South China Sea It doubtless... But if rich countries began offering basic incomes generous enough to live on, migrants might instead be drawn by the money on offer (The payments being considered in Finland and the Netherlands are vastly larger than the tiny income available in Maricá, for example .) Rich countries would face the choice of paying generous benefits to immigrants, shutting borders, or tolerating the growth of a second-class... Trump shows that their principles and heartlessness are not the same thing The presumptive Republican nominee’s campaign fairly drips with nastiness, but is strikingly uninterested in limiting the powers or costs of government Short of designing himself a uniform involving ermine and red velvet, he could hardly make it clearer that he dreams of reigning over, rather than governing, America He has promised... property, the stalling of negotiations on a bilateral investment treaty and a general perception that the trajectory of economic policy in China is no longer towards gradually increasing openness, but towards greater autarky and protectionism It does not help that massive Chinese overcapacity in industries such as steel is generating trade disputes and fuelling anti-Chinese tirades in America’s election... to interact and work with others in a diverse international setting in a harmonious and effective way Candidates are required to have an advanced university degree in law, including studies in public international law and international trade law and should be licensed or be eligible to be licensed to practice law in at least one municipal jurisdiction At least fifteen years as a legal practitioner in. .. state that was similar, in some ways, still went ahead In 1975 Congress created the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) It was a sort of “negative income tax”, an idea promulgated by the economist Milton Friedman, which provided support in inverse proportion to a worker’s income Like Tobin’s demogrant, Friedman’s idea was in part a response to worries about the “poverty trap” in existing welfare systems The... overhauling Mrs Clinton’s lead of 268 delegates in the nine remaining votes, the last of which, Washington, DC, is on June 14th He would need to secure 68% of the delegates available, which, given that the Democrats hand them out in proportion to vote share, not all to the winner, is almost unimaginable To justify his pledge to fight on, he therefore needs at least to win most of the remaining states;