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[资料分享] economist 阅读写作分析--jessicalulu [复制链接]

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发表于 2009-3-27 15:10:47 |显示全部楼层
本帖最后由 jessicalulu 于 2009-7-1 14:05 编辑

偶把所有的eco分析作业都集中在这一个帖子里面,帮助自己阅读、整理和查找哈~


好词好句积累


作者的思路topic sentence


GRE单词


读不懂的以及生词


知识扩充及可能当例子者


这两天作业很多,实在完不成了,coming down to earth这篇很长,加上我的时间不多,所以分散在3.25-3.29这几天做了,希望草斑理解。不好意思了~


1楼汇总:
补3.24 -- 2楼  Hollywood premieres --艺术类 (有木有好心人帮我解读下第二段第一句标了红色儿的那句话。。。)
补3.25至今
 -- 4楼到7楼 coming down to earth --政治类(这一篇太长了,分了几次来做。有木有好心人帮我解读下文中的红色句子。另外其实不太分析得来写作思路这种高深的东西。老大说要重新规范发帖格式,所以我的山寨版暂时发到这吧)




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发表于 2009-3-27 15:24:44 |显示全部楼层
本帖最后由 jessicalulu 于 2009-3-27 15:27 编辑

好词好句积累


作者的思路topic sentence


GRE单词


读不懂的以及生词


知识扩充及可能当例子者



Hollywood premieres


Dec 23rd 1999


From The Economist print edition



AND to think it might have been Brighton. Movies and Hollywood have become so synonymous that it is tempting to believe it had to be so. No. Well before outsiders from Americas east coast lit upon (偶然遇见,碰见,发现) Hollywood as a suitable base, a film industry was flourishing (繁茂的,欣欣向荣的)in Britain, in Sussex by the sea. 个人觉得这是一篇按时间顺序写的文艺类说明文,首段介绍的其实是个时代背景



James Williamson set it up, churning out jolly little crowd-pleasers with such titles as “Two Naughty Boys Upsetting the Spoons”.(看不懂) In 1900, two rivals, George Smith and Charles Urban, inventor of a colour system, Kinemacolor(彩色电影), joined forces and also set up in Brighton. Till not long ago, one could still see the warehouse, its roof emblazoned (用纹章装饰) with the word Kinemacolor, where they filmed such epics as “Mother Goose Nursery Rhymes”. 这段还是在讲H繁荣前的B是啥样的,为后来H出现的必然性埋下了伏笔



But the Brighton school lacked stamina(持久力,毅力). By 1909, it was gone. Stamina its American rivals had aplenty. But Hollywood was not their first choice. The industry was born in the east, where companies such as Vitagraph set up soon after 1900. Another such, American Mutoscope and Biograph (早期的电影放映机), developed a cine-camera, to the grief of Thomas Edison, who had patented one. Courts ruled that no patent had been infringed. So Edison linked with Biograph and eight other companies, which pooled(合伙经营) their patents, setting up the Motion Picture Patents Company in 1908. Each member had a licence to make films, using any members equipment. Exhibitors paid $2 a week to rent films and use projectors (放映机) from members. But if they showed films made by outsiders, the projectors were repossessed and the supply of films cut off. In plain English, a supplierscartel (企业联合). It became a worse one when Eastman Kodak, the biggest supplier of film stock, agreed to sell only to cartel members. Many competitors were driven out of business. But the strongest survived, including Carl Laemmle and William Fox, founders of what were to become Universal and 20th Century Fox.(这段关于Hollywood发展史的介绍,谈到了Thomas Edison早期的电影器材发明专利以及联合其它8大公司创立了MPPC,逼得很多竞争对手倒闭,不过还是有强悍的生存了下来。关于这部分的背景知识链接在后面。大概可以作为issue的一个例子,至于用在何时还不知。)




New York, where many of the trusts foes operated, was riskily near it. Canada was far to the north, Mexico too far south. Searching for a safer bolt-hole, they came upon a suburb of Los Angeles: Hollywood. It offered a stable climate, 350 sunny days a year, and had only a few hundred inhabitants. The movie makers could settle there and, they hoped, hardly be noticed. If lookouts hollered(大声叫喊) “the trust is coming”, even the cars of the time could manage a dash to the Mexican border. The Selig company moved west from Chicago in 1907, Mack Sennetts Keystone company in 1911. Others followed. By 1918, four-fifths of the film-making capacity of the world had relocated to Hollywood. 这段讲了Hollywood得天独厚的地理环境以及其真正繁荣的开始



Angelenos disapproved, seeing their suburb infected by these new vulgarians. Locals took steps(同 take actions,采取措施/采取行动) to make movie folk feel as unwanted as Jews (which many were) and negroes(黑人). They were excluded from country clubs and as late as 1918 were refused tenancies(租赁) in the ritzy(豪华的) Garden Court Apartments. But in the end snobbery yielded to the true American value, success. Success? Its the box-office(票房)gross, stupid. The mogul David O. Selznick is a Hollywood legend because his “Gone with the Wind” was, for a quarter of a century, the highest-grossing film ever made. World-beaters since then have included “Jaws”, “Star Wars”, “ET” and the current champ, “Titanic”. Hollywood knows a good movie when it sees one: one that may make a star, but must make somebodys fortune. David O. Selznick ,汗,查了资料我才知道该君为gone with the wind 的制片人,怪不得不知道。注意力全在Vivien leigh无与伦比的美丽上鸟。。。有眼不识泰山)



Hollywood in less than a century has grown from a toffee-nosed(势利的,虚荣的)village to a town as famous as New York, Rome or Paris. And physically, of course, it has changed beyond recognition: a century ago, you would walk through orange groves to the village store. Yet in a way it is still a village—small-minded, with narrow boundaries, just a little bit of LA. For all who live and work in it, there is one topic of conversation—movies: how much they have made, who concerned is knifing or sleeping with whom, who is “attached” to which project. Those who have been successful often try to get away: to work there, but live somewhere else. Yet it is still the one place in the world to which almost everyone who is anyone in show-business (and plenty who arent) eventually gravitates. 最后一段给Hollywood下了个评论,纵观全文我认为作者还是持中立态度的,不知道理解对没



知识扩充:


1. Mother Goose Nursery Rhymes鹅妈妈童谣,nursery rhymes为童谣,原本并不是英国人的创意,事实上在它出版的一百年前,也就是1697年,法国人Perrault写出了一本由八个民间故事组成的小册子,并将它命名为Contes de ma mère l'Oye(Tales of Mother Goose)。这些故事于1729年被翻译成英文。在这之后,英国人John Newbery 发现出版类似的面向儿童市场的小册子利润可观,于是他和同伴决定合作整理并出版一本民间流传的童谣合辑。于是在1791年,Mother Goose's Melody在英国正式出版,收录了52首小诗,每一首都配有寓意和木版画的插图。这一版本现在已经是非常难得的珍品了。




2. 纽约和新泽西的电影公司迁向加州的原因主要有几点。首先这里的天气好,日照时间长。虽然电灯已经发明了,但还不够亮,最好的光源是阳光。除此之外,加州视野宽广,有各种不同的自然风景,对电影拍摄有利。除自然条件外,在主观原因方面,好莱坞成名的最主要因素是来自发明大师爱迪生所创办的电影托拉斯公司的强大压力。爱迪生是著名的发明家。他在电影器材方面也有许多的发明设计革新,并拥有相应的专利权。1897年至1918年,爱迪生在美国挑起电影专利权之争,和众多电影制造商对簿公堂。同时,他看准了电影事业的发展远景,利用手中的电影器材王牌,将当时在美国东部的九大电影公司合并成为他的电影专利公司,由此控制了电影市场。那些不甘从命的制片人,纷纷寻找新的出路,以摆脱爱迪生的垄断,另起炉灶。这时候,在爱迪生成立电影专利公司之前已到好莱坞拍片的一家小制片厂(长老电影公司)提供了好莱坞的信息。这家原在美国东部新泽西州的电影厂,在好莱坞廉价租得厂房,快速地拍出了第一部好莱坞电影《她的印第安英雄》,这部片子给好莱坞扩大了知名度,那些欲寻自己出路的电影制片人,为好莱坞优越的自然外景和发达的交通条件所吸引,纷纷来到好莱坞开创基业。另外加州距离新泽西州非常遥远,爱迪生很难在这里控制他的专利权。加州没有那么多爱迪生的手下,即使他派人过来,往往消息早已走漏,这样一来好莱坞的电影制造商就可以及时躲到附近的墨西哥去了。爱迪生的死对头卡尔·雷穆也在好莱坞大兴土木,并创建了环球公司,成为新的影业大王。与此相反,作为好莱坞催生剂的爱迪生的电影专利公司,仅仅风光了10年,就被美国法庭宣判为非法的托拉斯而破产倒闭。

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发表于 2009-3-27 16:53:30 |显示全部楼层
插个队,共赏一下
光陰矢の如し

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发表于 2009-3-28 18:45:20 |显示全部楼层

RE: economist 阅读写作分析-dies in flames-by jessicalulu-coming down to earth

本帖最后由 jessicalulu 于 2009-3-30 23:15 编辑

好词好句积累

作者的思路topic sentence

GRE单词

读不懂的以及生词


知识扩充及可能当例子者


Barack Obama's progress


Coming down to earth(从幻想中回到现实)


Mar 26th 2009
From The Economist print edition


The president has had a bumpy ride in his first two months



TWO months after his inauguration, Barack Obama can already point to some impressive achievements. He has passed a $787 billion stimulus bill—the biggest in American history—and outlined an ambitious agenda for reforming health care and education, tackling entitlements and pushing “green” energy. He has also delighted his admirers at home and abroad(国内外) by beginning to reverse George Bush’s policies on such controversial subjects as talking to Iran, global warming, the treatment of enemy combatants and stem-cell research. (这一段讲了Barack Obama上台后的两个月内取得的一系列成就。根据标题来看,作者是打算采用欲抑先扬的办法,故重头戏在后头。这部分可以积累一下,估计政治类的issue里可以用到)



Unfortunately(果然一个转折,写到正题上来了), Mr Obama’s critics can also point to a striking record of failures. A startling number of his nominees for senior positions have imploded(这里取“剧减”之意,而非破裂). The upper ranks of the Treasury(国库,财政部) remain empty in the midst of the most serious recession since the 1930s. Warren Buffett, an early Obama-supporter and a man legendary for holding on to stocks that he has backed, thinks that the president is taking his eye off the ball. Andy Grove, a former head of Intel, describes the administration’s performance as “ineffectual”. Even the commentariat, which swooned over Mr Obama’s campaign, is running out of patience. 上段讲achivements, 这段讲failures。但是没有直接讲其在哪些方面失败了,主要通过原来支持者对其的否定方面来说。这种逻辑稍微有点问题哈,少数支持者的批评就能说明Barack Obama上任以来是失败的么?作者尚需更多的证据来证明这一点。)



Many of Mr Obama’s achievements have a Potemkin(见附1的注解) quality. He signed a $410 billion spending bill that contains 8,570 earmarks (directing funds to specific projects), despite his pledge to reduce the practice. His budget rests on unrealistic assumptions about America’s future economic growth and about the cost of his spending programmes. He throws out numbers like confetti: Peter Orszag, his usually impressive budget director, made a dismal job of explaining to Congress where Mr Obama intended to find the $634 billion “down payment(分期付款中的头期款)he promised for health-care reform. (这一段批评点着眼于“钱”,说了Barack Obama像个款爷一样把钱花在了无谓的事情上。这一段可以注意一下的是,全文的基调是贬义的,所以用了很多的负性词汇,如Potemkin, unrealistic, dismal。从这些词上我们也可以看出作者的倾向性。)



Mr Obama’s erratic performance is partly the result of the rollercoaster(波动的,非常不稳定的,过山车) world he finds himself in. Few presidents have come to power with as much political capital(政治资本). Mr Obama beat John McCain by seven points. His party has majorities of 39 seats in the House of Representatives and ten in the Senate. The administration can also draw on the brainpower and political muscle of a powerful network of liberal think-tanks and pressure-groups that were formed during the Bush years. But this understates his strength. His election represented a turning point in America’s bitter racial history. It also possibly coincided with the end of a conservative era that began with Ronald Reagan’s election in 1980. 从政治层面分析Barack Obama当选的原因以及暗含的他的机遇。好多年脱离政治了,看得我晕晕乎乎很不适应)




At the same time Mr Obama confronts an unusually difficult set of challenges. America is in the grip of a recession that is crushing jobs and reducing demand at an alarming rate. Some of America’s most famous financial institutions have collapsed. General Motors is on the verge of collapse. The unemployment rate, which is already 8.1%, could hit double figures. The American political system is arguably more dysfunctional than ever, with the parties heavily polarised and the 24-hour-news cycle magnifying bad news. (他面临的一些困难,主要是经济危机,政府部门的两极分化以及新闻机制。这一段作者还是写得比较客观的。这段关于美国经济危机的内容,我们可以考虑用于经济类、政治类或者历史类的文章。比如政府部门在经济危机中的作用。另外新闻机制放大坏消息这个作者虽然没有扩展开来写,还是可以考虑用在政府部门是否对公众坦白那道issue)



All this means that Mr Obama’s first two months in office are difficult to evaluate. But a few things seem pretty clear. This is a strikingly ambitious president: he wants to be “transformative” in more than just the sense of being the first black president. But so far his presidency has been vitiated by a combination of incompetence and a willingness to fall back on the very tactics that he denounced as a candidate.(这句不太懂,主要是fall back on the very tactics that he denounced as a candidate怎么理解) Indeed, his desire to be “transformative” may be contributing to his problems, distracting him from the economic crisis.首句对上面这些内容做了一个总结,其后的but笔峰一转又回到了作者最初的倾向-贬。


(to be continued~)







惊人的 striking/startling/alarming




附1:俄国女皇叶卡捷琳娜二世的情夫波将金,为了使女皇对他领地的富足有个良好印象,不惜工本,在“圣上”必经的路旁建起一批豪华的假村庄。于是,波将金村成了一个世界闻名的、做表面文章和弄虚作假的代号


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发表于 2009-3-30 23:14:39 |显示全部楼层
go on~

The pragmatic liberal


Mr Obama has already outlined the most ambitious agenda for transforming America since the Reagan revolution: proposing universal health care, expanding the role of the federal government in education, tackling global warming and reducing America’s growing inequalities. This has ignited a fierce debate about his ideology. Is he an unreconstructed liberal who will provide the left’s answer to Ronald Reagan? Or is he a New Democrat, as he himself claims? The answer is probably a mixture of the two. Mr Obama is a pragmatic liberal, more confident about big government than Bill Clinton’s New Democrats, but less wedded to liberal solutions than many of the old lions in his party. (只能理解这部分的字面意思。left's answer to Ronald Reagan是指什么呢?big government又是指什么呢?渴望大侠指教。觉得自己缺少这方面的知识储备导致不理解其意思。)



He has spent his career, apart from a year or so in business consultancy, in the non-profit sector, first as a community organiser and later as a rising politician. (这句子写得简洁漂亮,背啊背啊~)In his memoirs he often speaks disparagingly(以贬抑的口吻/轻视的态度) about the private sector. He draws some of his keenest support from trade unions and liberal pressure-groups. The most influential think-tank(智囊团) in Mr Obama’s Washington, the training ground for many of his top appointees, is the Centre for American Progress, funded by liberal billionaires such as George Soros and Peter Lewis. 本段承接上段,深入分析其mixture




But the president also has a pragmatist’s suspicion of ideology. Some of the most prominent figures in his administration are centrists(中立派议员). Kathleen Sebelius, his prospective health secretary, was a popular governor of Kansas, one of the country’s most conservative states. Larry Summers, his chief economic adviser, is a famous gorer of liberal ones. Cass Sunstein, his regulation tsar(沙皇), argues that the government should use market incentives(动机) to “nudge” people rather than bludgeoning (overcome or coerce as if by using a heavy club )them directly.蛮好的表达,学习。很形象~很艺术~很精辟~偶好久才写得出来这种感觉~膜拜~



Mr Obama certainly plans to increase taxes on the rich—but only to their level during Mr Clinton’s administration, which presided over the high-tech boom and a surge(汹涌,振荡,澎湃) in the small-business sector. Mr Obama wants to reform the health-care sector. But he prefers to supplement the private system rather than replace it with a “single-payer” national health service; many of his supporters are business people crushed by the cost of health care. He wants to increase the role of the federal government in education. But he also speaks eloquently about introducing more merit pay and creating more charter schools. “The resources come with a bow tied around them that says ‘reform’,(呃,看不懂这句)argues his chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel. The administration’s nervousness about old-fashioned liberalism has contributed to its hesitancy in dealing with the banking crisis. Rather than simply “nationalising” the weakest banks and taking over their bad debt, it has preferred to create an elaborate system of incentives for private investors. 理想和显示差距太大啊,纵使Obama大人满腔抱负,很多事情实现起来确实就不是那么回事咧。。。感叹。。。这一段改编一下,可以当作例子使用。




If his domestic(国内的) policy is a mix of pragmatism and liberal ambition, his foreign policy is a mixture of pragmatism and liberal caution. TS,句子言简意赅,ambition和caution概括出国内外政策的区别。He has revised the legal regime governing al-Qaeda (新基地组织,萨叔那个) terrorists, put an end to brutal interrogations and promised to close down Guantánamo Bay(就是经常爆出虐囚丑闻的那个地儿,Obama上任初即称要关闭此处,以表现其与Bush对恐怖事件的不同态度), to the delight of the anti-war left. But otherwise his policy is characterised by a combination of realism and caution. Realism when dealing with other powers: he has signalled to the Chinese that he will not make a fuss(大惊小怪) over human rights, and to Arab rulers that he will take a more balanced approach to the Middle East. Caution when it comes to unwinding the “war on terror”: he has rethought his campaign promise to withdraw America’s troops from Iraq in 16 months, is increasing America’s military presence in Afghanistan and is stepping up strikes into Pakistani territory.这段其实具体列举了Obama处理国事上的承诺与现实不符的情况,对上一段提出的问题具体讲解。

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发表于 2009-3-31 13:25:12 |显示全部楼层
本帖最后由 jessicalulu 于 2009-3-31 13:26 编辑

Obamateur


The biggest surprise of Mr Obama’s first two months has not been his policy preferences (most of which he advertised), but a certain lack of competence.(承上启下的TS,重点在后半句,引出下文) The man who earned the sobriquet(nickname)No Drama Obama(附2)” for running such a disciplined campaign has, since coming to office, slipped on one banana skin after another(比喻的手法,学习).



He has lost a remarkable number of nominees: two potential commerce secretaries, Bill Richardson and Judd Gregg; a health secretary-cum-health-reform tsar, Tom Daschle; a chief performance officer, Nancy Killefer; and a head of the National Intelligence Council, Charles Freeman. This has clouded his administration’s claims to ethical purity, not least because two of the nominees, Mr Daschle and Mr Killefer, had tax problems. It has also contributed to the sense of chaos. 开始分点阐述其上任后的trouble,这一段在说人员的流失。



Mr Obama is paying a heavy price for securing the nomination of his treasury secretary, Tim Geithner. Mr Geithner’s tax problems meant that the White House had to be super-scrupulous in vetting other Treasury figures. He was uncertain in his early public appearances and slow to produce a plan for sorting out(分类) America’s banks. Mr Obama’s confidence in him may at last be paying off; his plan for buying “toxic assets”, released this week, sent the markets soaring(Ascending to a level markedly higher than the usual:
剧增的:上升到明显高于正常水平的:
, he gave a confident performance before Congress, and the senior ranks of his department are now beginning to fill up.
But it would have been nice not to have waited so long for the Treasury to start firing on all cylinders.



The Obama administration has also made a long list of smaller mistakes.(TS) Gordon Brown, the British prime minister, ought to be one of Mr Obama’s closest allies in fixing the global financial system, for both ideological and historical reasons. But Mr Obama badly mishandled his meeting with Mr Brown, giving him no more than half an hour and presenting him with a gift of a job lot of DVDs which do not even work in Britain. The G20 meeting in London is the first get-together of all the big industrial countries since Mr Obama came to office. But the administration’s preparations have been cursory. 外交失误



Many of Mr Obama’s mistakes stem from a single strategic miscalculation: he is trying to do too much too quickly. The financial crisis would overwhelm any administration, let alone(更不用说) one that is still trying to fill key jobs. But Mr Obama has chosen this moment to tackle a collection of problems, such as health care and environmental regulation, that have defeated much less overburdened(负担过重的) administrations. 国内事物上眼大肚子小



The administration advances two justifications for this, one substantive (you can’t fix America’s economy without also dealing with its long-term problems) and one political (“Never waste a good crisis”). The American economy will certainly be stronger if the country can tame its health-care costs. But health-care inflation has nothing to do with the financial crisis. The problem with never wasting a good crisis is that you alienate potential supporters, particularly Republicans, and risk overloading the system. “Mr Obama likes to say that presidents can do more than one thing at a time,” remarks Peggy Noonan, a Reagan speech writer, “but in fact modern presidents are lucky to do one thing at a time, never mind two.” It is worth remembering that Mr Obama’s idol, Franklin Roosevelt, introduced a broad reform agenda only after he had gained credit for tackling the banking crisis.

There is plenty of evidence that the administration is much too thinly stretched. David Smick, a consultant, argues that Mr Obama has a three-pronged approach to the crisis—“delay, delay, delay”. He announces grand plans only to stint(紧缩,节省) on the details. He promises budgetary discipline only to put off the hard decisions until later. The president pops up with a speech excoriating(批判) AIG bonuses (“I am angry”) but fails to explain the thinking behind his economic programme. Mr Buffett has given voice to widespread worries about the administration’s failure to prioritise. “Job one is to win the war, the economic war. Job two is to win the economic war—and job three. And you can’t expect people to unite behind you if you’re trying to jam a whole bunch of things down their throat.”




Mr Obama’s decision to announce a big-spending budget just when he is spending billions to rescue the financial system has also reinforced worries about America’s fiscal situation. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that some of Mr Obama’s social policies will be more expensive than the White House claims, and that the economy will grow more slowly. The deficit will be $9.3 trillion over the next decade, averaging 5.3% of GDP a year. Mr Orszag concedes that such a number would be unsustainable. 花钱太多




附2:no drama 不要和我胡扯,不要骗我。奥巴马竞选班子最自豪的一句话是“No Drama Obama”,意思是奥巴马竞选不搞噱头,不搞哗众取宠的炒作。





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发表于 2009-3-31 23:13:51 |显示全部楼层
本帖最后由 jessicalulu 于 2009-3-31 23:24 编辑

Politics-as-usual


Almost as striking as the contrast between Mr Obama’s soaring ambition and his frequent incompetence is that between his promise to elevate politics and his willingness to continue with politics-as-usual. 一个爆长的同位语从句,惊艳。既承接了上文,又很自然得过渡到了下一段。赞!All presidents run for office(竞选) promising to change Washington and end up becoming its captives. But few have reversed themselves as quickly as the Hope-meister.


Take bipartisanship(两党合并). It is true that Mr Obama has made some bipartisan appointments, keeping Robert Gates at the Pentagon and giving transport to Ray LaHood. He made concessions in stimulus negotiations, and has invited a few Republicans over for cocktails. But his bipartisanship has been mostly of the George Bush variety: he is quite happy for his opponents to endorse(认可,貌似是个上台面的词儿) his policies.



He has surrounded himself with hardened Democratic “pols” such as Rahm Emanuel, his chief of staff, and David Axelrod, his campaign strategist-turned-senior adviser. He has filled the top levels of his administration almost exclusively with people from the world of government: a former senator (at State), two former government officials (Treasury and Defence), two former governors (Health and Homeland Security). David Ignatius of the Washington Post points out that this administration is “as thin on business experience as a Hyde Park book club”. This not only limits the range of advice he can hear and the experience he can draw on. It also makes it even more difficult to prevent panic on Wall Street or Main Street(见附3).Obama班子组成的局限性,仍是通过举证的办法论述



Mr Obama is now enthusiastically engaged in something that he foreswore as a candidate: the art of the permanent campaign. Senior White House advisers meet every Wednesday night to plot(cabal/scheme) political strategy. Mr Obama’s former campaign manager, David Plouffe, is e-mailing millions of Obama supporters to encourage them to put pressure on their congressional representatives to pass the budget. Mr Obama gives a striking share of his set piece speeches in swing states. The Obama team has repeatedly suggested that the Republicans are a party of “no” who owe fealty to Rush Limbaugh, a polarising talk-radio host. In other words, Mr Obama is squandering(waste) his political capital doing exactly what Mr Clinton did so often in his presidency: justifying his mistakes, trying to get the better of the 24-hour news cycle, and demonising(使变成魔鬼) opponents.




Mr Obama’s decision to restart the campaign engine is a sign of his administration’s troubles. /It is desperate to distract attention from the fact that it has broken some of its promises. It is determined to manage the anger stirred up by the huge bonuses paid to various AIG honchos. It is also desperate to make sure that the Republican Party cannot make too much political capital from the chaos at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. /(运用句式相同递进的表达方式,加强语气,使论证更深入一层。)(红色部分不理解。。。觉得是用了某种暗喻,不懂啊。。。)The result is a downward spiral: the more Mr Obama fails, the more he resorts to the permanent campaign, and the more he resorts to the permanent campaign, the more he becomes just like any other president. (这句写得太精妙了,建议大家都来背一背,很形象得体现了spiral。the more..., the more..., and the more..., the more....)



To add to the impression of business as usual, Mr Obama is continuing the long-standing trend of amassing(gather) ever more power in the White House. He has appointed a clutch of powerful White House-based tsars to oversee Cabinet offices. These tsars have no accountability to anybody but Mr Obama. They have every incentive to engage in empire building and turf wars. For example, Jim Jones, the national security adviser, is redefining the role of the NSC to oversee everything from traditional foreign policy to climate change. American liberals complained bitterly about the Bush administration’s politicisation of intelligence. But Mr Obama has arguably taken this politicisation to new heights(take sth. to new heights) by appointing Leon Panetta, a Democratic loyalist with no roots in the intelligence world, to oversee the CIA.




The president cannot yet be described as a failure. It is still early days. America’s political system, unlike Britain’s elective dictatorship专政, is designed to be frustrating. Power is divided. Congress uses its position to inject bloat into legislation. Presidents ricochet (弹跳)between success and failure. At this point in the election cycle Mr Clinton was embroiled in the gays-in-the-military fiasco and John Kennedy was heading towards the Bay of Pigs.




The confirmation process has been getting ever longer and more traumatic. Every recent president has seen presidential nominees flame out(突然失灵, 突然冒火焰) in disgrace. Polarisation has intensified(加强). The recession raises questions that go to the heart of the ideological division between the parties: should you resort to Keynesian stimulus or Schumpeterian creative destruction? Should you bail out people who have borrowed too much money or let them sink? Even a president who had worked hard at bipartisanship might have been undone by these divisions. Mr Obama’s approval ratings remain in the 60s, despite the pressure of a global crisis, and the Republicans remain unpopular and rudderless.




During the election campaign Mr Obama was frequently slow to respond to crises. Then, just when his supporters began to despair and his opponents began to smell blood(比喻), he would pull himself together and rise to the occasion. Mr Obama has been slow to get the full measure of the presidency. He has failed to establish firm priorities, and has all too often let events dictate his agenda. All in all, his performance has looked shaky. But at last this week there were signs, when he revealed his bank bail-out plan, that he is starting to do what he did so often during the campaign: justifying the enormous faith that has been put in him.




附3:“Main Street”是世界许多地方的村镇或小城市主要零售街道的一个通用称呼(常常是正式名称),它通常是商店和零售商聚集的商业中心区,常指零售和社交的区域。(在美国文化中)一般而言,“Main Street”是指一个具有传统价值观的地方。在北美媒体中,有时把“Main Street”——象征日常劳动阶层人民和小企业主的利益与 “Wall Street”(美国)或“Bay Street”(加拿大)——象征着企业资本主义的利益相对比。例如,在20世纪中期,共和党曾分为“华尔街派”(社会自由)和“商业街派”(社会保守)两个派别,后者在20世纪末占主导地位。“Main Street”在2008年经济危机和总统竞选和辩论中是一个非常流行的词,代表着拯救美国金融体系的主张。



总结一下,这篇文章涉及很多政治,历史方面的问题,还大面积运用了俚语以及借喻的写作手法。故有些地方理解起来有点麻烦。至于思路啥的我确实不太分析的来啦。。。


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发表于 2009-7-1 14:18:41 |显示全部楼层
Drug policy in the Americas
At last, a debateJun 25th 2009
From The Economist print edition

And an intemperate defence of prohibition
EVER since George Bush senior launched “the war on drugs” in earnest(诚挚的) two decades ago, Latin American governments have been more or less willing belligerents. That was partly because of the carrot and stick of American aid and bullying, but mainly because they suffer the brunt of the violence and corruption inflicted by trafficking mafias. Yet now there are signs of a rethink.

The clearest came in February when the Latin American Commission on Drugs and Democracy, a group headed by three former presidents—Fernando Henrique Cardoso of Brazil, César Gaviria of Colombia and Ernesto Zedillo of Mexico—published a report arguing that the violent crime and corruption generated by drug prohibition is undermining(从底部破坏) democracy and that the drug war has “failed”. They called for a public debate on alternatives, including treating drug use as an issue of public health rather than criminal law, and decriminalising marijuana.

This approach is gaining adherents. At least one minister in Brazil’s government agreed with the report. Even as it battles the drug gangs, Mexico has decided that people caught with small amounts of drugs should be treated rather than prosecuted. Argentina and Ecuador are considering more radical decriminalisation. Mr Cardoso, who has retired from political office, has since gone further than the commission and called for the decriminalisation of cocaine. He says that many active politicians privately agree with him. And in the United States, the Obama administration has signalled a shift away from drug “war” and mass incarceration and towards policies that treat drugs as a health issue.



This fracture in the taboo on questioning drug prohibition seems to have rattled Antonio Maria Costa, the boss of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. In his preface to the annual World Drug Report, released this week, he concedes that drug users need “medical help not criminal retribution”.

But he also implies that proponents of drug legalisation—who include The Economist—are really seeking fresh sources of tax revenue to rescue failed banks. (No, Mr Costa, to pay for drug treatment and education.) Grotesquely, he equates legalising drugs and human trafficking. (Drugs primarily harm the user whereas trafficking harms others.) He claims legalisation would “unleash a drug epidemic in the developing world”. (That is what prohibition is achieving, because the criminal gangs it generates in developing countries have started supplying their local markets.) He smears his critics as “pro-drug” (as absurd as suggesting he is “pro-crime”). This kind of hysteria smacks of an organisation that is not just losing an unwinnable war but losing the argument.
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发表于 2009-7-1 14:42:20 |显示全部楼层
Michael Jackson
Death of a showmanJun 26th 2009
From Economist.com
Michael Jackson made great pop records, lurid headlines and lots of money

FOR a life so extraordinary the manner of Michael Jackson’s passing on Thursday June 25th was utterly banal: a middle-aged man succumbing to an apparent heart-attack. (There was speculation that an alleged dependency on prescription painkillers may have been a contributing factor.) During his progress from child prodigy(天才儿童) to the self-styled “King of Pop” and, more recently, an eccentric semi-recluse, no part of Mr Jackson’s private life had given any other hint of normality. But behind the mask that plastic surgeons had made of his face was a keen brain for wringing cash out of pop music—and for spending it. 首段写得相当传神,三言两语即将Michael传奇的一生,做一小结~ 尤其是紫色标记的三个短语~

Mr Jackson first performed on stage at the age of six, accompanying his four older brothers. The Jackson Five, under the strict stewardship of their manager and father, signed to Motown Records in the late 1960s and began producing a string of(一连串) hit records—a sequence of(一连串) success that Mr Jackson continued in a 30-year solo recording career. It is reckoned that his final tally of album sales is around 750m—the most that any artist has sold. And one of those, “Thriller”, released in 1982, became the most successful yet seen, shifting 65m units. This record may well remain unchallenged: sales of albums have suffered as pop fans these days prefer downloading individual tracks from the internet.



The length of Mr Jackson’s career ensured that he experienced, popularised and even pioneered many of the techniques that help artists to profit from their musical talents. At the beginning of his career, touring was a vital component of performers' incomes, though a shift to earning money from selling records was well under way. By its peak, in the 1980s, touring had come to be seen by the music industry as a loss-making promotional tool to shift albums.

Mr Jackson did not invent the pop promotional video, as he is sometimes credited with doing. But he took this art form to new heights with the lavishly(极其丰富地) expensive video he made in 1983 for the title track of the “Thriller” album. He brought in one of Hollywood's top directors, John Landis (best known for “The Blues Brothers”), and spent an unprecedented $500,000 on the 14-minute miniature epic. But it was money well spent: the launch of MTV, two years earlier, whose format was being copied by other broadcasters, meant that videos had rapidly become one of the most valuable tools for marketing recorded music, and more cost-effective than concert tours. The “Thriller” video was broadcast incessantly(不断地) all around the world, pumping up the album's sales.

At the height of(在...鼎盛时期) his success Mr Jackson and his team of managers made the shrewd calculation that the value of pop music was wrapped up in the publishing rights to songs just as much as in record sales. In 1985 he paid $47.5m for ATV Music, which owned the copyrights to most of the Beatles' songs. Ten years later he sold half his interest for $150m to Sony. The value of his stake was probably around $500m when he died. This was roughly equal to the upper estimates of the debts he was struggling to refinance, which he had amassed funding his increasingly bizarre style of living.

Despite his vast earnings Mr Jackson was forced to borrow huge sums against his stake in ATV and his future earnings (recently reckoned to be about $19m a year) to pay for his huge shopping sprees(大血拼) and the upkeep of “Neverland”, his ranch in California. Last year he announced plans for a long series of concerts in London to boost his income and pay off his creditors. Playing live has re-emerged as the way to make money from pop as falling sales, rampant piracy and digital distribution have slashed revenues from recorded music.

Despite having built himself an extravagant fun palace, with its own zoo, fairground and elaborate topiary, Mr Jackson cut an increasingly lost and lonely figure in his later years. Though twice married and with three children, his closest relationships appeared to be with a chimpanzee and a succession of(一连串) young boys. The questions raised by these unusual friendships continued to hang in the air(未完成,未核实) until his death. He was acquitted in a Californian court in 2005 on charges of molesting one 13-year-old boy but reportedly paid $20m out of court in 1994 to head off other allegations of child abuse.

His status as a pop genius may well(完全能) always be tainted by the strangeness of the life he chose to lead. Elvis Presley, still the unchallenged King of Rock’n’Roll, is increasingly remembered for his music, as memories fade of his own unusual private life. Mr Jackson would doubtless have craved to be held in the same public awe and affection (his dynastic ambitions even stretched to a brief marriage with Lisa Marie, Presley’s only child). But, sadly, for now he will be remembered by many as “Wacko Jacko” rather than the King of Pop.

尽管个人不甚认可作者对Michael的Wacko评价,但是不可否认,这篇文在措辞,行文结构上的可学习之处。
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RE: economist 阅读写作分析--jessicalulu [修改]
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