Eideard

 
Har!

Thanks, Ursarodinia

It seems to be a national obsession in India: measuring the country’s economic development against China’s yardstick.

At a recent panel discussion to commemorate the 20th anniversary of India’s dismantling parts of its socialist economy, a government minister told business leaders to keep their eye on the big prize: growing faster than China. “That’s not impossible,” said the minister, Palaniappan Chidambaram, who oversees national security and previously was finance minister. “People are beginning to talk about outpacing China.”

Indians, in fact, seem to talk endlessly about all things China, a neighbor with whom they have long had a prickly relationship, but which is also one of the few other economies that has had 8 percent or more annual growth in recent years…

“Indians are obsessed with China, but the Chinese are paying too little attention to India,” said Minxin Pei, an economist who was born in China and who writes a monthly column for The Indian Express, a national daily newspaper…

It might be only natural that the Chinese would look up the development ladder to the United States, now that it is the only nation in the world with a larger economy, rather than over their shoulders at India, which ranks ninth. And while China is India’s largest trading partner, the greatest portion of China’s exports go to the United States. China’s largest trading partner is the EU – even if it doesn’t fit the NYT editorial template.…

Evidence of the Indo-Sino interest disparity can be seen in the two countries’ leading newspapers. The People’s Daily, the Chinese Communist Party’s house organ, had only 24 articles mentioning India on its English-language Web site in the first seven months of this year, according to the Factiva database. By contrast, The Times of India, the country’s largest circulation English-language newspaper, had 57 articles mentioning China — in July alone.

There are other big gaps. Indian cities, large and small, are filled with Chinese restaurants that serve a distinctly ultraspicy, Indian version of that cuisine. But there are few Indian restaurants in Beijing or Shanghai, let alone in smaller Chinese cities.

RTFA. It rolls on through a chunk of anecdotal information. Useful as far as it goes. And it only goes as far as the NY TIMES habit of continuing the Cold War with China – even though it finally seems to have relented a little over Russia.

Frankly, the significant historic difference lies in handicaps which India retains. Much of the caste system is unrelenting regardless of lip service and law. China’s bureaucratic corruption siphons off a lot less opportunity and value. India’s cachet of wealth and power held by historically “important” families is closer to Japan’s Zaibatsu than anything in China. Ongoing commitments to religion in India – whether as a cultural anchor or dedicated political parties – hinders the growth of the economy as much as you would expect from theocratic ideologues in government.

The world’s largest human migration — the annual crush of Chinese traveling home to celebrate the Lunar New Year, which is this Sunday — is going a little faster this time thanks to a new high-speed rail line.

The Chinese bullet train, which has the world’s fastest average speed, connects Guangzhou, the southern coastal manufacturing center, to Wuhan, deep in the interior. In a little more than three hours, it travels 664 miles, comparable to the distance from Boston to southern Virginia. That is less time than Amtrak’s fastest train, the Acela, takes to go from Boston just to New York.

Even more impressive, the Guangzhou-to-Wuhan train is just one of 42 high-speed lines recently opened or set to open by 2012 in China. By comparison, the United States hopes to build its first high-speed rail line by 2014, an 84-mile route linking Tampa and Orlando, Fla.

Speaking at that site last month, President Obama warned that the United States was falling behind Asia and Europe in high-speed rail construction and other clean energy industries. “Other countries aren’t waiting,” he said. “They want those jobs. China wants those jobs. Germany wants those jobs. They are going after them hard, making the investments required.”

Indeed, the web of superfast trains promises to make China even more economically competitive, connecting this vast country — roughly the same size as the United States — as never before, much as the building of the Interstate highway system increased productivity and reduced costs in America a half-century ago…

On a recent Wednesday, the 2:50 p.m. bullet train glided smoothly out of Guangzhou’s station and within four minutes was traveling more than 200 miles an hour. Practically every seat on the 14-car train was full of migrants heading home for Chinese New Year…

China’s response to the Great Recession was to invest federal funds in infrastructure capable of moving people as well as commodities. The Bullet Train project was targeted at 2020 in the original plan. When the recession hit, the emergency decision was made to accelerate construction.

Hundreds of thousands of workers got instant jobs. Manufacturers of components – global and domestic – benefitted from the new pace of production. And we’re told by conservative beancounters we should worry more about deficits than jobs or results.

So, which #6 is the best reader?

While genetics play a key role in children’s initial reading skills, a new study of twins is the first to demonstrate that environment plays an important role in reading growth over time.

The results give further evidence that children can make gains in reading during their early school years, above and beyond the important genetic factors that influence differences in reading, said Stephen Petrill, lead author of the study…

“We certainly have to take more seriously genetic influences on learning, but children who come into school with poor reading skills can make strides with proper instruction,” Petrill said.

While other studies have shown that both genetics and environment influence reading skills, this is the first to show their relative roles in how quickly or slowly children’s reading skills improve over time.

The study participants were 314 Ohio twins participating in the Western Reserve Reading Project. This study included 135 identical twins and 179 same-sex fraternal twins…

Environmental factors include everything the children experience – how they are cared for by their parents, how much they are read to, the neighborhood they live in, nutrition and their instruction in schools, among other factors…

The findings showed that when children start out reading, both genetics and environment play a role in readings skills, depending on the skills assessed. For word and letter identification, genetics explained about one-third of the test results, while environment explained two-thirds. For vocabulary and sound awareness, it was equally split between genetics and environment. For the speed tests, it was three-quarters genetic.

But when the researchers measured growth in reading skills, environment became much more important, Petrill said.

The single best advantage my parents provided me and my sister was teaching each of us to read before either entered kindergarten. They provided us with the best habit for life – IMHO.

Will a new gadget stick around? You can’t tell from its first act, but you might know by its second or third release. Or maybe its seventh. Consider two new follow-on performances in the wireless-phone industry: One broadens the appeal of Google’s Android software, while the other cements the irrelevance of Microsoft’s aging Windows Mobile platform.

The first item is Sprint’s HTC Hero, shipping Oct. 11 for $279.99 before a $100 mail-in rebate for new or renewing customers. It’s the first Android phone available here from a carrier besides T-Mobile. That alone is good news: Sprint’s data coverage vastly exceeds T-Mobile’s patchy service, and its prices beat T-Mobile’s, too…

The real star of the Hero, however, is not its hardware but its open-source software. Android…

The other, less impressive new phone development of the month is Microsoft’s Windows Mobile 6.5 — the company’s first big update to its mobile software since the iPhone arrived in 2007. You might think that two years would be enough time for Microsoft to respond to its new competitor, but you would be wrong.

As tested on an AT&T HTC Pure, one of a handful of devices with the new software…Windows Mobile 6.5 is a miserable mess. Slow, clumsy and ugly, it offers a few surface refinements of the iPhone and Android but little of their underlying elegance…

Windows Mobile 6.5′s new onscreen keyboard seems designed for a shrunken species of human, to judge from its tiny buttons. And its menus often reveals cramped dialogs unchanged from older versions of Windows Mobile that required using a stylus.

With all these issues, it can be difficult to see many people wanting a Windows Mobile phone now. But it’s even harder to imagine how long phone manufacturers will keep paying Microsoft for this software when Android is not just better but free.

I don’t think anyone has a mandate to help Microsoft sort their countless internal problems. I know from a few friends who were recruited by Microsoft – their reason for turning down the offer was always the same. They were expected to be so happy about working for the Prince that they should be willing to accept a Pauper’s paycheck.

Of course that’s an exaggeration. But, whether you’re in Redmond or Mountainview [or Cupertino], the characterization of Microsoft as cheapskates is as consistent as the pundits who whine about Google employees being overpaid and coddled.

Consumer groups and travel agents have hit out at budget airline Ryanair after it emerged the company plans to cancel thousands of travel tickets bought by customers through third-party websites…

The so-called screenscraping sites allow customers to buy tickets without directly visiting the Ryanair website. They are thought to account for around 0.5% of bookings made with the Irish airline.

From Monday Ryanair will cancel all tickets bought through these sites, which could mean thousands of customers a day do not get seats on the flights that they want.

Those who book tickets via third party sites will get their money back, but they will have to rely on the site to let them know their flight has been cancelled.

It is not clear how long this will take, which means some people booking last-minute trips may turn up at the airport to find their ticket has been cancelled.

Phew! I guess Ryanair is betting the whole farm on discounting price and doesn’t give a hoot in Hell about how many consumers they screw in the process? Good luck with that business strategy.