The Economist explains

SCOTLAND'S future—inside or outside the United Kingdom—will be decided on September 18th, and it is going to be close. Over the past week opinion polls have shown a narrowing gap between the two campaigns, some suggesting that the pro-independence "Yes" vote has edged ahead for the first time. Should the referendum be successful, Scotland will become an independent country on March 24th 2016, the 309th anniversary of the Union. But what an independent Scotland might look like is still unclear. Revenue from oil reserves are a key part of the financial plan of the Scottish National Party (SNP), but some experts have labelled its projections optimistic.

A SOUTH KOREAN saying claims that a stone thrown from the top of Mount Namsan, in the centre of the capital Seoul, is bound to hit a person with the surname Kim or Lee. One in every five South Koreans is a Kim—in a population of just over 50m. And from the current president, Park Geun-hye, to rapper PSY (born Park Jae-sang), almost one in ten is a Park. Taken together, these three surnames account for almost half of those in use in South Korea today. Neighbouring China has around 100 surnames in common usage; Japan may have as many as 280,000 distinct family names. Why is there so little diversity in Korean surnames?

Korea’s long feudal tradition offers part of the answer.

Grade point averages have soared at American universities. But are students actually getting smarter?

GLOBALISATION has made the planet more equal. As communication gets cheaper and transport gets faster, developing countries have closed the gap with their rich-world counterparts. But within many developing economies, the story is less rosy: inequality has worsened. The Gini index is one measure of inequality, based on a score between zero and one. A Gini index of one means a country’s entire income goes to one person; a score of zero means the spoils are equally divided. Sub-Saharan Africa saw its Gini index rise by 9% between 1993 and 2008. China’s score soared by 34% over twenty years. Only in a few places has it fallen. Does globalisation have anything to do with it?

THE tides of eastern Ukraine's war have shifted again. After weeks of ceding territory, the Ukrainian rebels have dealt government forces a series of swift counterstrikes. Backed by reinforcements from Russia, the separatists retook several towns near the regional capitals of Donetsk and Luhansk over the past week, and have opened up a third front to the south. The message was clear: we aren't going anywhere. The pro-Western Ukrainian government in Kiev has long asserted that the insurgency is a Russian creation.

EARLIER this month the Oxford Dictionaries added a number of new words to its online collection. (This is not to be confused with the flagship Oxford English Dictionary.) As usual, Oxford included buzzy internet- and youth-inflected coinages such as "neckbeard", "side boob" and "mansplaining". And as usual, internet commenters seemed nonplussed by what seemed to be a venerable institution (ie, Oxford) validating teenage slang. How do lexicographers decide what goes into the dictionary?

THIS YEAR senior officials from Taiwan and China have held two meetings in each other’s territory. Both meetings were the first formal contact between the two governments since 1949. In recent months officials from Taiwan have been proposing an even bigger breakthrough in relations: a meeting between their president, Ma Ying-jeou, and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping. They have suggested this take place in Beijing in November in the margins of a gathering of leaders from the Asia-Pacific region. China has responded coolly to the proposal and has not invited Mr Ma. But even if a meeting does not happen in November, hurdles to one appear to be falling away. Why has this taken so long?