6.

Breaking with bread

Are low-carbohydrate diets an easy route to weight loss or a recipe for a
heart attack?
By Clare Wilson, from New Scientist, Jan. 9, 2021

Countless fad diets come and go, but these days there is one we never
stop hearing about. Whether you call it low-carbing, Atkins, keto or paleo, the
principle is the same: cutting down on starchy food and filling up on fat and
protein.
Low-carbohydrate diets are increasingly being endorsed by obesity and
diabetes specialists, and a growing number of trials show that the approach
helps people lose weight at least as much as traditional low-fat, low-calorie
regimes. More and more people are eating this way, not to lose weight, but
because they see it as healthier.
Yet many doctors warn that low-carbing is dangerous. They point to large-
scale population studies linking low-carb diets to increased risk of heart
attack, stroke and premature death.
The puzzling thing is, those warnings don’t seem to square with findings
from clinical trials, generally a better kind of medical evidence than
population studies. Several have now shown that low-carb diets generally
don’t raise the levels of “bad cholesterol”, long seen as a major risk factor for
heart attack and stroke. Even in people who do see a rise, other markers of
heart health usually improve.
It is so confusing that some wonder if we have got the causes of heart
disease all wrong. “This has led me to question whether I believe in the
cholesterol hypothesis at all,” says Eric Westman, an obesity specialist
at Duke University in North Carolina.
As rising rates of obesity and diabetes threaten public health, the
questions around the safety of low-carb diets are becoming increasingly
urgent. So, is ditching carbs a safe way to lose weight and stay healthy – or a
recipe for heart attack?
Low-carb diets first came to fame in the 1970s through New York
cardiologist Robert Atkins, who lost weight himself this way and recommended
it in diet and cookery books. His advice to fill up on steaks, cream and butter,
while shunning most fruit and vegetables, made him a medical pariah. Critics
said people wouldn’t be able to stick to it, and if they did, it would kill them,
says Westman, who studied under Atkins.
For many people, however, low-carb diets clearly work. By the early
1990s, randomised trials were showing that such diets are at least as good as
low-fat ones for weight loss, often a little better. In one trial, people on a low-
carb diet lost an average of 4.4 per cent of their body weight after a year,
compared with 2.5 per cent among those in a low-fat group. And contrary to
the warnings, people’s cholesterol levels, and results from other blood tests,
generally moved in the right direction. “That was a big moment,” says
Westman, who led some of those studies.
What’s the explanation? The central idea is that weight control requires
more than just calorie counting. For a start, the same amount of calories from
fat or protein makes people feel fuller than if they come from carbs, which
explains why people on low-carb diets report less hunger than those on low-
fat ones. Westman’s studies helped show that, although most people on low-
carb diets don’t calorie count, they tend to consume just 1200 to 1500
calories a day, much less than the recommended 2000 calories per day
for women and 2500 for men. “They eat less because they’re not hungry,”
says Westman.
The other key insight is about what happens when we change the body’s
main energy source. Usually, our cells are fuelled by glucose, a simple sugar
that all other forms of sugar or starch are converted into. Glucose is highly
reactive, so our bodies normally keep the amount in the blood within a narrow
range to avoid damage to blood vessels and cell structures. When glucose
levels rise after eating, we quickly release the hormone insulin, which tells
cells to start taking up glucose, and using and storing it.
Insulin has a host of other effects, but they can be summarised as
signalling to our bodies we have had an influx of calories and we need to
stash them away. Crucially, insulin makes fat cells turn glucose into fat and
store it. But in the absence of glucose, the body has an alternative fuel
source: fat. Depending on the cell type, stored fat may be turned into fatty
acids or into molecules called ketones, which can be used for energy. This
normally happens a little overnight, when we go for several hours without
eating any carbohydrates.
The raison d’etre of low-carbing is to minimise insulin release and be
fuelled as much as possible by ketones. For most people, a shift into what is
known as ketosis happens within a few days of dramatically cutting carbs.
Eating very low levels of carbs is also known as a ketogenic diet.
 7. Cheque’s in the post World’s most valuable stamp sells for $8.3m to
Stanley Gibbons
By Daniel Thomas, from Financial Times (Europe), June 10, 2021

The world’s most valuable stamp has been bought for $8.3m by Stanley
Gibbons, which plans to offer investors the chance to buy fractional ownership
of the unique asset as part of a push by the 165-year-old company into digital
collecting.
The 1856 One-Cent Magenta from British Guiana — known as the Mona
Lisa of stamp collecting as the only one in existence — was bought at auction
at Sotheby’s in New York from the collection of luxury shoe designer Stuart
Weitzman.
At the same auction, David Rubenstein, co-founder of private equity firm
Carlyle Group, bought a block of “inverted Jenny” stamps — famous for an
upside-down aeroplane misprint — for $4.9m, setting a record for a US stamp
sale.
The One-Cent Magenta has attracted record prices through its history. In
1856, British Guiana issued a small number of the temporary stamps while its
postmaster awaited a shipment from England that had been delayed by a
storm.
It last sold for $9.5m in 2014, which was a record at the time. According to
the Smithsonian, which has exhibited the stamp, it has appeared in public
only on rare occasions. Previous owners include John du Pont, heir to the
DuPont chemical fortune.
The purchase by London-based Stanley Gibbons amounts to more than a
third of the market capitalisation of the Aim-listed company.
Shares in the group rose almost 10 per cent yesterday to above 3p,
although they have largely not moved since the 2018 bailout of the company
by fund manager Phoenix. The group took a controlling 58 per cent stake in
the stamp merchant, and reduced the listed company’s debts, as part of a
£20m deal. Since then, new management has cut costs and focused on
profitable markets, although the turnround strategy was hit by falling sales in
the pandemic.
Phoenix has provided a five-year interest-free loan to buy the stamp,
which will be displayed at the Stanley Gibbons flagship store on the Strand in
London. The 165-year-old stamp is the same age as the company, which is the
world’s oldest rare stamp dealer.
Graham Shircore, chief executive of Stanley Gibbons, said the company
wanted to make it available to everybody to buy through fractional ownership
and the creation of digital collections. He said the deal brought together “the
world’s largest stamp dealer and the world’s most valuable stamp”.
Shircore added that Stanley Gibbons was a dealer, rather than collector in
its own right, although it would hope that the stamp appreciated in value
under its ownership.
 8. Your next home could emerge from a printer
From The Economist, Aug. 21, 2021
A batch of new houses across California is selling unusually fast. In the
past two months, 82 have been snapped up, and the waiting list is 1,000 long.
That demand should, though, soon be satisfied—for, while it can take weeks
to put up a conventional bricks-and-mortar dwelling, Palari Homes and Mighty
Buildings, the collaborators behind these houses, are able to erect one in less
than 24 hours. They can do it so rapidly because their products are assembled
from components prefabricated in a factory. This is not, in itself, a new idea.
But the components involved are made in an unusual way: they are printed.
Three-dimensional (3D) printing has been around since the early 1980s,
but is now gathering steam. It is already employed to make things ranging
from orthopaedic implants to components for aircraft. The details vary
according to the products and processes involved, but the underlying principle
is the same. A layer of material is laid down and somehow fixed in place. Then
another is put on top of it. Then another. Then another. By varying the shape,
and sometimes the composition of each layer, objects can be crafted that
would be difficult or impossible to produce with conventional techniques. On
top of this, unlike conventional manufacturing processes, no material is
wasted.
In the case of Palari Homes and Mighty Buildings, the printers are rather
larger than those required for artificial knees and wing tips, and the materials
somewhat cruder. But the principle is the same. Nozzles extrude a paste (in
this case a composite) which is then cured and hardened by ultraviolet light.
That allows Mighty Buildings to print parts such as eaves and ceilings without
the need for supporting moulds—as well as simpler things like walls. These
are then put together on site and attached to a permanent foundation by
Palari Homes’ construction workers.
Not only does 3D-printing allow greater versatility and faster construction,
it also promises lower cost and in a more environmentally friendly approach
than is possible at present. That may make it a useful answer to two
challenges now facing the world: a shortage of housing and climate change.
About 1.6bn people—more than 20% of Earth’s population—lack adequate
accommodation. And the construction industry is responsible for 11% of the
world’s man-made carbon-dioxide emissions. Yet the industry’s carbon
footprint shows no signs of shrinking.
Automation brings huge cost savings. Mighty Buildings says
computerising 80% of its printing process means the firm needs only 5% of
the labour that would otherwise be involved. It has also doubled the speed of
production. This is welcome news, the construction industry having struggled
for years to improve its productivity. Over the past two decades this has
grown at only a third of the rate of productivity in the world economy
as a whole, according to McKinsey, a consultancy. Digitalisation has been
slower than in nearly any other trade. The industry is also plagued, in many
places, by shortages of skilled labour. And that is expected to get worse. In
America, for example, around 40% of those employed in construction are
expected to retire within a decade.
The environmental benefits come in several ways, but an important one is
that there is less need to move lots of heavy stuff about. Palari Homes, for
instance, estimates that prefabricating its products reduces the number of
lorry journeys involved in building a house sufficiently to slash two tonnes off
the amount of carbon dioxide emitted per home.
9. Billie Jean King was a champion on and off the court
From The Economist, Aug. 14, 2021

At the age of 15, Billie Jean King anticipated the trajectory of her life in a
school essay. A tennis prodigy, she thought she would soon make it to
Wimbledon but lose in the quarter-finals. On the flight to London she would
meet a heart-throb and fall in love. In time she would be happily married,
“sitting with my four wonderful children” and grateful to have an education
and a husband, “instead of turning out to be a tennis bum”.
Luckily for fans at the All England club, Ms King proved better at slicing
backhands than at prophesy. Between 1961 and 1979 she won six Wimbledon
singles titles and 14 in doubles in one of the 20th century’s great sporting
careers. She never had children, and defended abortion rights with the
example of her own terminated pregnancy. She did marry a man, but later
emerged as a figurehead for gay rights.
In “All In”, a perceptive autobiography written with Johnette Howard and
Maryanne Vollers, Ms King notes that her youthful prediction reflected the
stifling boundaries that hemmed in American girls in the 1950s. Few women
had careers; professional women’s sports barely existed. When she began
winning tennis trophies, first near home in California, then in Europe, she
encountered shocking pay disparities. To her disgust, for instance, in 1970 the
Italian Open offered $3,500 to the men’s champion and $600 to the women’s.
Other indignities followed. Journalists focused on female athletes’ looks, not
their achievements. Ms King refused to play to type and faced snide criticism.
Her outspokenness was derided. Male stars offered no support, laughing off
the notion that fans came for ladies’ matches.
She pursued equal pay relentlessly. A pragmatist, she arrived at a meeting
with the US Open’s tournament director in 1972 with corporate funds in hand
to bridge the prize gap. She vowed that most of the top women would not
participate the following year if he refused. (He agreed.) She organised the
Women’s Tennis Association in 1973 and became its first president. Later that
summer she won Wimbledon in singles, doubles and mixed doubles. Today
women compete for equal prize money in all four Grand Slam competitions.
The world’s best-paid female athlete is routinely a tennis player.
Ms King’s highest-profile match was the “Battle of the Sexes” in 1973.
Bobby Riggs, a loudmouth with hidebound views and a knack for publicity,
challenged her to a friendly exhibition. She recognised the stakes and took
care not to underestimate her opponent, studying his game and developing a
plan to make the older man run. And run him she did, under the carnival lights
of the Houston Astrodome, with 30,000 people cheering and 90m more tuning
in at home. Countless admirers later told her what her win meant to them, she
writes, including Barack Obama, who saw her practise in Hawaii in the 1970s.
True to its title, “All In” is bracingly candid. Alongside the sporting and
political battles, it tells of the eating disorder from which Ms King suffered, a
sexual assault she experienced as a teenager and the whirlwind of being
outed as a lesbian by a former lover in 1981. Ms King does nothing by half-
measures—so much the better for readers, sport and the many women she
encouraged and empowered.
 10. The chip shortage is a self-solving problem
---Government subsidies will lead to overcapacity and waste
From The Economist, Aug. 7, 2021
One firm’s crisis is another’s opportunity. A shortage of semiconductors
has helped pump up the valuations of firms such as Nvidia, whose chips
power everything from video-gaming to machine learning and data centres.
But boom time for sellers means misery for buyers. Carmakers, whose
products have become computers on wheels, are among the victims. Profits at
Ford, America’s second-biggest carmaker by volume, fell by half in the most
recent quarter amid a global shortage of chips. Analysts say the industry
might build around 5m fewer cars this year, all for want of their tiniest
components.
Carmakers are not the only firms feeling the pinch. Apple and Microsoft
have also warned that they will be affected. Politicians are being drawn in,
too. Chips will be on the agenda later this month when America’s vice-
president, Kamala Harris, visits Vietnam, which has a flourishing electronics
industry. Angela Merkel, the outgoing German chancellor, has lamented
Europe’s small share of global chip production.
The shortage is the result of a sudden surge in demand. Chipmaking is a
cyclical business which, between the peaks and troughs, has been enjoying
strong growth for decades as computers creep into every corner of society.
That trend was amplified by the pandemic. Locked-down consumers shopped
online, logged into meetings remotely, and wiled away the hours with video-
streaming and video-gaming. The result has been a spike in demand for the
semiconductors that power the data centres and gadgets that make such
things possible, clogging factories with orders.
The crisis has had three consequences, two encouraging and one less so.
The first is an investment boom. Big producers such as Intel, Samsung and
TSMC are planning to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on extra capacity
over the next few years. As in many markets, high prices are the best cure for
high prices.
The second is that the chip industry’s customers are adapting, too. When
demand collapsed early in the pandemic, carmakers cut their orders with
chipmakers. The car industry’s size and clout mean that it is used to ordering
suppliers around. But when demand recovered, it found itself at the back of
the queue, because of long lead times and competition for capacity from the
even bigger and more influential tech industry.
The unpleasant experience of being the supplicant rather than the boss
has prodded carmakers to take tighter control over supplies of vital
components. Following in the tyre-treads of Tesla, Volkswagen has announced
plans to develop driver-assistance chips in-house. Other firms are forging
closer relationships with chipmakers. Toyota, a Japanese firm, has weathered
the shortage relatively well, partly because it was slower to cut orders when
the pandemic hit. In June Robert Bosch, a big supplier of automotive parts, cut
the ribbon on a €1bn ($1.2bn) chip factory of its own in Dresden. Redesigned
supply chains will be more resilient.
The third, unwelcome effect has been a surge of techno-nationalism.
America is planning to hand out billions of dollars to lure chipmakers back
from East Asia. Europe wants to double its share of global production, to 20%,
by 2030. Even Britain has declared the fate of a small chip factory in Wales to
be a matter of national security.
There is some force in the argument that chips have come to occupy what
used to be called the “commanding heights” of an economy, in the way that
oil refineries or car factories did in the 20th century. The concentration of
production in Taiwan, in particular, is an uncomfortable geopolitical risk. But
as last century’s governments discovered, subsidies lead to overcapacity and
gluts—and, eventually, to yet more calls for public money to prop up
uncompetitive businesses. The chip shortage is mostly a self-solving problem.
Governments should resist the temptation to see themselves as saviours.
 11.Don’t kill, repel
The world’s insects are in trouble–changing how we use pesticides could help
them recover
From New Scientist, June 5, 2021

Insects are disappearing. The world has 25 per cent fewer terrestrial
insects now than in 1990. This includes those we rely on to pollinate our crops
and clean our rivers. If we don’t solve this problem very soon, some species
will disappear.
There are many causes for the insect decline, but insecticides are a major
part of the problem. Those used today are longer lasting and up to 10,000
times more toxic than some that were banned in the 1970s. Adding to the
problem is that these pesticides are now applied to crops prophylactically and
used whether pests are present or not.
Overall, the amount of pesticide applied to the land is decreasing, but this
is a grossly misleading statistic. A recent paper found that, between 2005 and
2015, there was a 40 per cent reduction in the amount of pesticide applied to
crops measured by weight. But because modern insecticides are so much
more toxic, the global toxicity of treated land to pollinating insects has more
than doubled in the same period (Science, doi.org/f5vp).
Governments and regulating agencies are aware of the problem, and
some parts of the world have moved to ban the use of certain insecticides
outdoors in an attempt to help bees survive. But the pesticides used instead
are just as toxic.
One often-touted approach is to use pesticide-free pest control methods.
These varied techniques are gathered under the name of integrated pest
management (IPM) and have been around for decades. They offer effective
crop protection and include methods such as crop rotation and the use of
natural predators. But their adoption has been incredibly slow, because
spraying pesticides is viewed as an easier option. As a result, IPM methods are
unfortunately seldom used today.
Neither changing insecticides nor shifting to IPM is a quick fix. We argue
instead that we need a subtle shift in focus, away from killing pests and
towards protecting crops.
Currently, products are developed and marketed to kill pest insects
immediately. This has become the goal of crop treatments, and the death of
the insect is considered the proof that
a treatment works. But the real goal of pesticide use isn’t to wipe out insects,
it is just to protect crops to secure food production.
We have found that using just a fraction of the concentrations applied
today stops insects feeding on crops. At these reduced concentrations, there
would be a lot less insecticide leaching into the environment, so less harm to
beneficial insects. This low dose is the equivalent of an anti-mosquito spray: it
repels mosquitoes so they don’t bite you. Whether the mosquito is alive or not
doesn’t matter, either way you have received protection.
Similarly, we don’t need to kill all pest insects in a crop: we just need to
reduce the population enough to ensure that it causes no important economic
damage. Farmers know that a handful of insects don’t cause problems, it is
when they reproduce that trouble comes. We have found that much less
insecticide is needed to prevent insects from reproducing than is needed to
kill them.
We have also discovered that crops are inadvertently treated too many
times. Often, they are first treated with fungicides that also happen to be toxic
to insects. Treating them again
with an insecticide is like killing one bird with two stones.
By using the minimal dose we need to protect crops, we could reduce the
amount of insecticide to a fraction of what is used today. Farmers would
benefit from these changes. They would spend less money on pesticides and
improve crop production by keeping healthy pollinator insects about. Reducing
insecticide doses won’t solve the insect decline problem, but it is a move that
could win us time to make food production more sustainable and reconcile
farmlands and the natural ecosystems we crucially depend on. And that will
allow insects to recover.
 12.How to make great ice cream
Fancy making ice cream this summer? The secret to a soft and creamy dessert
is in the science of freezing, says Sam Wong
From New Scientist, June 5, 2021

Most foods are pretty challenging to eat when they are frozen, but ice
cream manages to be soft and creamy when it has just come out of the
freezer. It seems magical, but there are some easy ways to make delicious ice
cream at home, without any special equipment.
A basic ice cream is made from cream, milk and plenty of sugar. The
sugar doesn’t just provide sweetness, it lowers the freezing point of the
cream. To solidify into ice, water molecules must arrange themselves into a
framework. Sugar molecules are big and don’t fit into the framework very
easily, so the solution needs to become much colder – slowing the molecules
down – to freeze.
As a result, sweetened cream only partially freezes in the freezer. Once
most of the water in the cream has formed into ice crystals, the remainder
becomes so concentrated with sugar that it stays liquid in the freezer.
In fact, ice cream has three phases: solid ice crystals, liquid cream and
pockets of air. It is usually made in machines that churn the cream as it
freezes to get more air into the mixture, which makes the ice cream lighter
and easier to scoop.
Churning also helps keep ice crystals small, key to the texture of the ice
cream. If the crystals are bigger than about 50 micrometres, your tongue can
sense their rough edges. The faster the mixture is frozen, the smaller the
crystals and the smoother the ice cream.
“No-churn” ice cream recipes can be put straight into the freezer without
being mixed in a special machine. These usually mean you have to whip the
cream, building air into the mixture, before other ingredients are added. The
recipes often use sweetened condensed milk instead of normal milk to lower
the water content relative to fat and sugar, making it harder for large ice
crystals to form.
If you are using this method, fast freezing is particularly vital in keeping
the ice crystals small, so make sure everything is thoroughly chilled before
you start and then freeze the mixture in small, shallow containers.
Another way to make ice cream exploits how solutes lower the freezing
point of water. When we scatter salt on an icy pavement, the ice melts – but it
absorbs heat from its surroundings to do so. Before the advent of
refrigerators, ice cream was made by putting the cream in a can surrounded
by salt and ice. The salt would melt the ice and produce a supercooled brine
with a temperature many degrees below 0°C, which, in turn, would freeze the
cream.
To make ice cream this way, mix the ingredients in a small, sealable bag
and seal it, pushing out as much air as you can. Put this in a second such bag
to ensure it doesn’t leak. Put this inside a larger sealable bag with the ice and
salt. Close this, wrap it in a towel and gently squeeze or shake it until the
mixture looks like ice cream, usually in about 10 minutes.

13. Van Gogh painting is stolen

By Sebastian Smee, from The Washington Post, March 31, 2020

Holding valuable artworks can be a liability for public museums, especially

in times of crisis. The risks have been brought home by the overnight theft of
a painting by Vincent van Gogh, “The Parsonage Garden at Nuenen in Spring
1884,” from the Singer Laren museum, a small museum east of Amsterdam.
On Monday, van Gogh’s birthday, thieves broke into the museum, which
has been closed because of the coronavirus, at around 3:15 a.m. They
smashed a glass door at the entrance and, although an alarm was triggered,
made off with the painting before police arrived.
Museum directors and security guards around the world will have taken
note. During the coronavirus crisis, many museums find themselves
custodians not only of their own collections but also valuable works from other
collections, public and private, that have been lent for temporary exhibitions
and are now stranded away from their owners as museums close and travel
restrictions take hold.
Lack of crowds and security potentially compromised by staffing issues
during the virus outbreak may present an invitation to opportunistic thieves.
Upheaval during the second Iraq War led to brazen, large-scale looting of the
Baghdad museum. But art thieves do not require upheaval as drastic as war
to sniff out opportunity.
Austerity measures in Greece after its financial collapse in 2009 led to a
30 percent increase in the illegal trade of classical antiquities, as fewer people
were employed to protect museums and archaeological sites. Quiet streets
and institutional disarray may prove just as tempting.
Van Gogh’s painting does not belong to the Singer Laren museum. The
museum had borrowed it from the Groninger Museum in the Netherlands for a
temporary exhibition. It was the only van Gogh in the collection of the
Groninger museum.
Jan Rudolph de Lorm, director of the Singer Laren, said during a news
conference that he was “shocked and unbelievably pissed off” by the theft.
The Singer Laren shows the art of American artist William Henry Singer
and his wife, Anna. Singer was the son of a steel baron of the same name who
sold his company, Pittsburgh Bessemer Steel Co., to Andrew Carnegie. Against
his family’s wishes, the younger Singer went to Paris and then to Laren, an
artists colony in the Netherlands, to pursue his art. His widow opened the
museum, which also has a concert hall, in 1956. The museum also exhibits
work by a Dutch school of artists affiliated with the Laren artists colony.
Van Gogh painted “The Parsonage Garden at Nuenen in Spring 1884”
between 1883 and 1885 during a stay in Nuenen, in the Netherlands, where
his father was the village pastor. It depicts the village church, which the artist
could see from his house, across an expanse of garden and fields.
It is not the first painting by van Gogh from this period to have been
stolen in recent years. The Dutch artist’s “Congregation Leaving the reformed
Church in Nuenen” was stolen twice, first in 1991 and then, after its prompt
recovery, in 2002, both times from the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. It
was recovered the second time 14 years after the theft, when Dutch and
Italian authorities traced it and another van Gogh, “View of the Sea at
Schveningen,” to a town outside Naples, then known as a stronghold of the
Camorra, an archipelago of crime gangs involved in drug trafficking.
The thieves in 2002 entered the Van Gogh Museum through the roof. The
theft from the much smaller Singer Laren appears to have been cruder, with
thieves breaking in on the ground level.
 14.A small step for women
Progress in the boardroom is only a start
From The Economist, March 9, 2019

The glass ceiling in the corporate world is not broken, but it is starting to
crack. Women are getting on to corporate boards at greater speed, and in
greater numbers.
Research by LinkedIn, a professional networking site, shows that across
five countries (America, Germany, India, Italy and Norway) women it lists as
directors reached the position faster than their male counterparts did. In
America, for example, women got there 9.8 years after leaving university and
men after 10.9 years.
This suggests that younger women are making good progress in the
boardroom. Overall, however, females are still lagging behind the males. The
proportion of people in leadership roles (director-level and above) that is
female in the five countries varies from 17% in India to 35% in America.
Britain has seen a clear advance; a campaign there called the 30% club
has managed to increase the share of female directors of FTSE 100 companies
from 12.5% in 2010 to 30.6%. But as the world marks International Women’s
Day on March 8th, it is clear that the glass ceiling has not shattered.
Some firms may be paying only lip service to the idea of female
leadership. A paper in the Academy of Management Journal* highlights the
phenomenon of “twokenism”, a statistical bunching of American companies
with exactly two female directors. The authors suggest this is directly related
to the average number of female directors on S&P 1500 boards in the period
studied (2004-13), which was 1.92. By opting for two women, businesses
could claim they had “above average” female representation.
In any case, a rise in the number of female directors is a narrow measure
of female economic success. Having women at the top of organisations may
inspire others to emulate them, and board members may be able push
through more female-friendly policies lower down in their organisations. But
the vast majority of women would never expect to become directors. What
they value is an opportunity to get a well-paid job and to be free from
discrimination while doing it.
In this respect the news is less encouraging. Across the OECD the gender
pay gap of full-time employees averages 13.5% and varies widely, from 3.4%
in Luxembourg to 36.7% in South Korea. It can be hard to adjust for all the
many factors, such as skill levels, that might explain this gap. Nevertheless,
the OECD found last year that full-time employed women with a college
degree earned, on average, 26% less than their male equivalents.
A World Bank survey of 187 economies, published last month, found that
women had, on average, three-quarters of the legal and employment rights of
men. The survey asked questions such as whether women were free to travel
and open a business, if they had property rights and if they were protected
from sexual harassment. In the Middle East and north Africa, women were
found on this basis to have less than half the rights of men (Saudi Arabia was
ranked lowest of all the countries surveyed). Only in six countries (Belgium,
Denmark, France, Latvia, Luxembourg and Sweden) did the law and society
grant women equal rights.
Problems are deep-rooted. Research by Lisa Cameron of the University of
Melbourne with the IZA, a German thinktank, found that in many developing
economies more than half of all nonagricultural female workers relied on
informal employment, a higher share than men. Not only do these women get
paid less as a result, they also lack access to state social programmes, such
as unemployment benefit and pensions, which are often designed with formal
employment status in mind.
The result is that poorly paid women have few resources to fall back on. In
addition, social programmes are much less generous in developing economies
than they are in the rich world, absorbing 17.7% of gdp in Europe and 10.7%
in America, but only 9.7% in Latin America and just 1.4% in South-East Asia.
Without the cushion of a benefit system, working women in the developing
world probably must endure more bullying and harassment at work, for fear of
losing their jobs.
So there is certainly cause to celebrate women making small steps
forward in the boardroom. But bigger leaps are still needed elsewhere.
 15. Webtoons are South Korea’s latest export hit
Film and television adaptations have spread their influence beyond comic
Aficionados
From The Economist, July 31, 2021

Moon Jae-in briefly assumed the face of a badly bruised schoolboy. But it
was not because he had botched a diplomatic mission or caused a political
scandal. Rather, the reason was celebratory. South Korea’s president had
donned a mask showing the protagonist of a popular web-based comic about
bullied teenagers, to mark manhwa (comic) day and popularise his country’s
latest export hit: webtoons, serialised comic strips that people can read on
their phones.
Webtoons began life in the early 2000s when Naver and Daum, the
country’s biggest search engines, hired cartoon artists to design online comic
strips. They were supposed to attract more visitors to their websites rather
than generate income. But over the past decade the market has grown
tenfold, making webtoons a vital source of income for the internet companies.
More strikingly, they have begun to attain a degree of influence over global
culture that belies their humble origins.
For readers of webtoons, the advantage over more traditional comics lies
in the variety of storylines and in the interactive features, animations and
dramatic background music. After finishing an episode, fans can hit the
comments section and debate the twists and turns of the plot with others. Lim
Hyun-jee, a 26-year-old from Seoul, likes being able to read new episodes on
her phone on her way to work rather than lug around hefty volumes of
Japanese manga (comics or graphic novels), which she also enjoys. Jacqueline,
a 21-year-old fan in Canada, says plots about girls discovering make-up and
meeting hot guys make a nice change from standard superhero fare.
But the success of webtoons is not restricted to comic lovers, says Jang
Min-gi from Kyungnam University. Some of the cartoonists who started with
Naver and Daum years ago have found themselves consulting on films and
television dramas, raking in thousands of dollars. “Sweet Home”, a horror
webtoon about a man surviving a virus that turns humans into monsters, was
made into a drama last year and became the most-watched show on Netflix in
eleven countries (a scene is pictured). Shows like “Itaewon Class”, about an
ex-con trying to sort out his life, or “Cheese in the Trap”, which follows the
romantic troubles of a group of students, have had success too.
Ms Jang thinks this will eventually draw even more people to webtoons, as
film versions of Spider-Man or Black Panther did for Marvel comics. “Most of
today’s Marvel fans saw the films before the comics. It’s the same with
webtoons. They are creating their own universe.”