Chinese author Lao Ma has a simple approach to his short stories: In the face of life, everything is funny. Mr. Lao, the pen name of Renmin University of China professor Ma Junjie, says there are plenty of laughable things in daily life that fuel his…

Is your desktop or laptop computer starting to feel a little poky? Even after just a few months of use, your PC or Mac may start to lose steam thanks to a fragmented hard drive, too many programs running in the background, or even a rogue piece of ma…

'What's celebrity sex, Dad?' It was my 7-year-old son, who had been looking over my shoulder at my computer screen. He mispronounced 'celebrity' but spoke the word 'sex' as if he had been using it all his life. 'Celebrity six,' I said, abruptly closi…

George Washington and his Revolutionary War victories. Robert Frost and the composition of 'Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.' Bill Gates and the founding of Microsoft. Steve Wozniak and the invention of color computer monitors. Tom Stemberg and…

Entrepreneur and author ShaoLan Hsueh thinks that English-speakers can start learning to read Chinese in less than 10 minutes. The language, she says, has more than 20,000 written characters, which most students in China learn by rote memorization. M…

What the world needs now is a Web-enabled toothbrush. That part is clear to several oral-hygiene companies. What they can't agree on is who was first to put teeth into the smartphone. The giant Procter & Gamble Co. last week demonstrated what it call…

It's a common scenario: You have an odd pain for weeks or are feeling too tired lately. So you head to a doctor, who may run a test or two. But no clear cause for the symptom shows up. Despite a dizzying array of high-tech medical tests, the reality…

The conference call is one of the most familiar rituals of office life -- and one of the most hated. ritual:典礼,宗教仪式 Abuses are rife. People on the line interrupt others, zone out or multitask, forgetting to hit 'mute' while talking to kids or slurpin…

If you find yourself needing to sit down to take off your shoes, it might be time to start paying attention to your sense of balance. People don't usually think about balance until they fall, but little signs such as relying on handrails to go up and…

For much of the last year, intellectuals and officials in China -- land of world-beating students and, in a bygone age, the scholar official -- have been wringing their hands over the country's declining interest in reading. bygone:过去的        wringin…