★征战AW，不忘阅读★Times or Economist系列精读★

StefanaUID：2143510

AW的三大关键：思想+词汇+句型。

思想可以在阅读中提炼，词汇可以在阅读中积累熟悉，阅读中还可以复习掌握词汇的精确用法，注意长句难句，今后又可以在做填空题的时候不费吹灰之力。也学学人家最IN的表达习惯，要知道AW写作也不见得是句子越长越难越好的。总之阅读嘛，正所谓一举多得。另外，建议摘抄背诵词汇、句子和例子，学习最in最标准的英文表达方法。

决定开这个贴是考虑很久的事情。草草以前常教导，出来混，迟早是要还的。以前不懂其深邃含义哇，直到考场上吃亏才知道。于是我跟qqqaaazzz在0910G之后开这样一个阅读大贴。一方面是督促自己每日巩固提高英文阅读，另一方面也希望用这样的形式来鼓动各位板油可以一起来做。

每篇文章不限时间，选材也没有什么特殊的要求。可以是类似GRE阅读的题材，也可以是自己专业方面的，也可以是一些好玩的新闻，这样的学习会很快乐。阅读的要求也很简单，仅仅是读懂为止，学习词汇和句子，目的是在平时打好基本功，为AW做准备，也是为以后的各种英文考试做准备。让阅读跟写作水平一同提升。



用美丽的西湖美景图开篇，也希望这英语学习之路一路风景优美绚烂。

……………………………………………………………这是美妙的分界线………………………………………………………………

对了，如果阅读中遇到疑问，可以跟贴提出。大家一起讨论。

From The Times
September 21, 2009
Green and confused: How safe are incinerators?

Q: I was persuaded to sign a petition as part of a successful campaign preventing the building of a local incinerator. Now I’m wondering if I was too hasty: I know that we can’t continue just dumping waste in the ground — is incineration safe?
A: A petition is thrust at you. An incinerator will be harmful to health — think of your children. It will emit a serious pong. It will be unsightly and, the final weapon in the anti-incinerator armoury, having one nearby is sure to bring down the value of your house.
Amid all the emotion and Nimbyism (“邻避”主义,原指垃圾场、核电厂、殡仪馆等设施的存在会给当地居民的生活、心理、荣誉等带来诸多负面影响,从而激发他们的嫌恶情结,滋生“不要建在我家后院”的心理,而这样一种高喊“别在我家后院（动工）”的主义就为“邻避”主义.)about waste disposal, the facts tend to go up in smoke. Modern incinerators are far more efficient and well-designed than those of only 15 years ago.
According to a recent report by the Health Protection Agency (HPA), air pollution — expressed in volumes of what’s called particulate matter — is a tiny fraction of that caused by the exhaust fumes from cars and lorries.
“The evidence suggests that any potential damage to the health of those living close to incinerators is likely to be very small, if detectable,” the HPA says.
The Germans, Swedes and Danes have been happily incinerating on a big scale for years. The UK at present has 23 incinerators in operation, with another 70-80 planned. Burn it, don’t bury it is the new catchphrase: as you say, we can’t go on shoving our refuse into holes in the ground. Landfill creates large amounts of methane, one of the most potent of greenhouse gases. If we don’t find alternative ways of dealing with waste, the EU will clobber us with ever-bigger fines.
While the health issue might not be so important, incineration does give rise to other problems. A modern incinerator, capable of not only burning enormous amounts of rubbish but also of generating energy to be fed into the grid, is an extremely expensive piece of kit. Waste companies want to be sure that they will have enough waste in the future to justify their investment.
The trouble is that it’s very difficult to forecast just how much waste will be generated in the years ahead. After all, we’re all being told to recycle as much as possible: in some areas waste volumes are already falling.
What’s needed are smaller high-tech incinerators on the edge of most big towns and cities. But the waste business talks of “economies of scale” — the bigger the plant, the more cost-effective it is.
It’s a real conundrum, so don’t worry too much about being confused. We all are.
Kieran Cooke

StefanaUID：2143510

嗯，再看一篇新点的。
我发现Times上的文章难度还是有限的。


From Times Online

November 8, 2009


Barack Obama's healthcare reform bill passes first hurdle
The House of Representatives handed President Obama the first major domestic victory of his presidency when it narrowly passed a sweeping reform Bill to provide healthcare to all Americans.
Mr Obama called the vote on Saturday “historic” and said that he was absolutely confident that he would sign a health reform Bill by the end of the year. All eyes now turn to the next battleground in the Senate, where passage of legislation is still far from assured.
Democrats have sought for decades to provide universal health coverage and when the Bill was passed by 220 votes to 215 late Saturday night, cheers erupted as Nancy Pelosi, the House Speaker, declared victory.
The vote marked the first time that a chamber of Congress has voted to back such sweeping reform of the US health industry. Mrs Pelosi compared the moment to the passage of a state pension system in 1935 and government health coverage for the elderly and poor in 1965.
Yet Mr Obama and his allies on Capitol Hill still face a tough battle to achieve his signature domestic issue. There is a significant risk that the debate will slide into 2010, a mid-term election year when vulnerable Democrats in conservative and moderate districts might fail to back a final Bill because of its huge cost.
Many are mindful of the Democratic losses last week in Virginia and New Jersey’s gubernatorial races, when voters declared their misgivings about Mr Obama’s spending plans at a time of record deficits. On Saturday night 39 Democrats voted against the Bill. Only one Republican backed it.
The Senate must now come up with its own version of a health reform Bill and Harry Reid, the Democratic leader in the chamber, is under enormous pressure from the White House to win passage before the end of the year. Mr Reid is struggling to find the 60 votes that he needs to overcome Republican blocking tactics despite his party’s Senate majority.
Even if Mr Reid succeeds in getting legislation out of the Senate, his bill — which will be markedly different from the liberal, 1,990-page, $1.2 trillion (£720 billion) behemoth passed by the House — will have to be reconciled into one piece of legislation in negotiations with the lower chamber, another very difficult challenge.
The success of the House Bill was, despite the obstacles ahead, a major victory for Mr Obama and provided significant political momentum In his drive for health reform. The vote came after he visited Capitol Hill on Saturday afternoon to corral wavering Democrats.
“It provides coverage for 96 per cent of Americans. It offers everyone, regardless of health or income, the peace of mind that comes from knowing they will have access to affordable health care when they need it,” declared John Dingell, the 83-year-old Michigan Democrat who has introduced universal health insurance legislation in every Congress since his arrival in 1955.
The huge package will transform large parts of the health industry, which currently accounts for a sixth of the US economy. Private insurers will no longer be able to deny coverage to people with pre-existing conditions, limit coverage or drop it altogether when people become ill.
The Bill also contains a government-run health insurance option to provide competition to private insurers, something that is bitterly opposed by Republicans and an issue that triggered heated and sometimes violent popular protests during the summer.
Under the House Bill most people will be required to obtain health insurance if it is not provided by their employers. All but the smallest companies will have to give employees coverage or face a fine as high as 8 per cent of payroll. Overall, the Bill would cover an additional 36 million Americans, leaving 18 million without insurance by 2019, about a third of them illegal immigrants.
The package will be paid for by increasing taxes on individuals earning more than $500,000 (£300,000) and on families taking in over $1 million a year by more than five per cent. The scope of that tax will increase quickly because the income thresholds would not be indexed to inflation.
Republicans remain almost unanimously opposed, decrying its huge cost and the tax increases needed to pay for it.

qqqaaazzzUID：2634671

改格式好麻烦。。。原谅俺用个链接。。

The odd couple    from economist

单眼皮vs肿眼皮UID：2705887

思想可以在阅读中提炼，词汇可以在阅读中积累熟悉，阅读中还可以复习掌握词汇的精确用法，...Stefana 发表于 2009-11-9 02:23

谢谢小乔！

StefanaUID：2143510

China's reaction to Communism's collapse
Keep calm and carry onNov 5th 2009 | BEIJING
From The Economist print edition
How Deng Xiaoping neutralised the country’s worst moment
“THE East German people are now strengthening their unity under the leadership of the party.” So declared China’s Communist Party mouthpiece, the People’s Daily, in October 1989. A month later the Berlin Wall fell. Even today, China’s leaders find the memory painful.
China’s state-owned media have mostly avoided the subject, as they have also stayed silent about the anniversary in June of China’s own pro-democracy upheaval of 1989—tumult that was witnessed by Mikhail Gorbachev, Russia’s leader, and which was bloodily suppressed only when he had gone home. They are probably obeying instructions from the Central Propaganda Department of the party. The party’s keen interest in the cause of national unification (in its case, reclaiming Taiwan) has not helped ease its qualms about the fate of East Germany.
Yet China’s ruling party has devoted considerable energy to dissecting the causes of communism’s collapse in eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. Official publishing houses have produced several works analysing them and drawing lessons from them. The first shock over, the party was quick not only to cement ties with eastern Europe’s new democracies but also to develop strategies for avoiding their predecessors’ fate.
In late 1989 China’s anxiety was so profound and its diplomacy in such confusion that it was difficult to imagine it would ever come to terms with the new world order. Fresh unrest seemed unavoidable. It was far from certain that Jiang Zemin, a little known leader who had been appointed party chief in the wake of the Tiananmen Square unrest, was on firm ground.
China’s dogged insistence that nothing untoward was happening in eastern Europe ensured that its awakening would be harsh. In early October 1989, even after thousands of East Germans had fled their country, China sent a senior leader to East Germany’s official celebration of four decades of communism (a “glorious” 40 years, the People’s Daily called it). East Germany’s 77-year-old leader, Erich Honecker, was a conservative much respected by China’s own gerontocrats, and a backer of the crackdown in Tiananmen. His resignation that October was appalling to them.
It was an appeal for cool heads by China’s 85-year-old senior leader, Deng Xiaoping, that helped China’s rulers weather the storm. In September 1989 he told them—in a speech only published years later—to be “calm, calm and again calm” and to carry on with China’s (mostly economic) reforms. Mr Deng’s advice, and its later elaboration, remains China’s guiding philosophy. Its central message is often summarised as taoguang yanghui, meaning “concealing one’s capabilities and biding one’s time”. Mr Deng wanted China to get on with building its economy and avoid ideological battles. The economy, in effect, would save the party.
David Shambaugh, an American scholar, wrote in a book published last year that China’s most important conclusion from communism’s ruin elsewhere was that an ossified party-state with a dogmatic ideology, entrenched elites, dormant party organisations and a stagnant economy was a certain recipe for collapse. The Chinese party, he argues, has been “very proactive” in reforming itself and adjusting its policies to new conditions.
Not everyone is satisfied. A website set up by a German group to gather internet users’ comments on the Berlin Wall anniversary, www.berlintwitterwall.com, has been deluged with postings from Chinese complaining about China’s “great firewall”, as the country’s state-managed internet filtering system is often called. Access to the website has been blocked by China’s internet censors for several days.
But China’s media controls are not as impermeable as they were when the Berlin Wall fell. One magazine, Southern Metropolis Weekly—known for its risqué reporting—devoted 19 pages to the Berlin Wall in its October 30th issue. “Among those who love freedom, efforts will never cease to tear down walls that block and restrict interaction,” said one of the articles. Another said that no matter what difficulties Germans now faced, “there are probably very few who want to return to the days before the Berlin Wall’s collapse”.
When President Barack Obama comes to China on November 15th, he will diplomatically avoid any public suggestion that China’s party should disappear like its east European counterparts. In July, addressing a meeting of senior Chinese and American officials in Washington, Mr Obama noted that the tearing down of the Berlin Wall had unleashed a “rising tide of globalisation that continues to shape our world”. Perhaps to avoid embarrassing a crucial economic partner, Mr Obama did not mention the event’s impact on communism. Mr Deng’s strategy has paid off nicely.

StefanaUID：2143510

From The Times
November 9, 2009

The Rite of Spring at London Coliseum
In a shocking sequence the men, trousers down, roll in the earth, thrusting against it as if trying to penetrate the soilDebra Craine


Even before The Rite of Spring starts, you’re in the mood for something disturbing and offbeat. Duke Bluebeard’s Castle, the first half of this ENO double bill, has seen to that. But Michael Keegan-Dolan’s savage and inspired rewrite of Stravinsky is stranger still, as exhilarating as it is harrowing.
A ritual yes, just as it was in 1913 Paris when Stravinsky’s ballet had its premiere, but a ritual imbued with the dangerous, chaotic energy of an isolated Catholic community, not a pagan Russian one. Keegan-Dolan says his production isn’t necessarily set in his native Ireland: “It’s an imagined community, a patriarchal one, somewhere in North Atlantic Europe”.
It’s winter: snow falls lightly, villagers are in coats and hats; to the side is a statue of the Virgin Mary. Three maidens arrive — symbolically— in summer frocks riding their bicycles. Presiding over all is Olwen Fouéré’s compelling queen of winter, a divine hag dressed in black and smoking a cigarette to Stravinsky. That this is a patriarchal community is never in doubt. The stage pulses with the testosterone energy of an 18-strong male gang (members of Fabulous Beast Dance Theatre). Moving in unison, they present an ensemble of searing intensity, despite the simplicity of Keegan-Dolan’s punchy, tight-knit choreography, while the music’s churning rhythms are vibrantly realised by Edward Gardner and his orchestra.
Violence erupts as knives are drawn and one man is singled out as the object of their aggression (a Christ figure?). The women are raped in a frenzy of sexual sadism; at one point their heads are covered in hare masks as if to emphasise their victim status. This is a society where impulses are out of control. In a shocking sequence the men, trousers down, roll in the earth, thrusting against it as if trying to penetrate the very soil. It’s at this point that the hag and a young boy hand out cardboard boxes to the men. Inside is a giant dog mask. Since you behave like an animal, the message is, you might as well look like one.
The sudden eruption of fear is palpable as the pack of dog-men attack the young women, killing two. And then, in a brilliant flourish, Keegan-Dolan throws a twist into the mix. A long rope of coloured fabric is unfurled only to separate into 18 women’s dresses, one for each man. The men disrobe in a kind of ritual cleansing, rejecting negative masculinity and embracing the positive of femininity as they don the frocks. The sacrificial dance is performed — in a state of exaltation — by Daphne Strothmann’s Chosen One, but it plays out against all expectation. In a stunning finale, the arrival of spring turns out to be a victory in more ways than one.

qqqaaazzzUID：2634671

[size=0.8em]Kraft's bid for Cadbury
Unsweetened

[size=0.7em]Nov 9th 2009
From Economist.com
Kraft goes hostile with its bid for Cadbury, a British confectioner

[size=0.74em]AFP

[size=0.8em]CHOCOLATES are universally recognised as a potent means of winning over hearts. And usually a suitor who presents a bigger box of treats is thought to have a better chance of success than one who brandishes a smaller one. So the decision of Kraft Foods to launch a hostile bid for Cadbury on Monday November 9th that fails to match up to its original offer of a couple of months ago is unlikely to result in a happy union. The American company’s hand was forced by a ruling from Britain’s Takeover Panel that it must make a full bid (which it has now done, in effect restating the original offer) or walk away for at least six months.

[size=0.8em]The hostile bid, like the offer that the American food giant made at the beginning of September, offers £3 ($5) and around one Kraft share for every four shares of the British maker of Crunchies and Creme Eggs. The potential burden of Kraft’s purchase of Cadbury and some lacklustre results have depressed the American firm’s share price (while Cadbury unveiled quarterly numbers that were better than expected). The current offer values the deal at £9.8 billion compared with £10.2 billion when Kraft made its initial approach.
[size=0.8em]
[size=0.8em]Cadbury also reiterated that it was unwilling to be consumed by a “low-growth conglomerate” insisting that its fortunes would be far better served by remaining independent. But if Kraft is a low-growth company it is also a huge and profitable one. Its bid for Cadbury is designed to give a sugar-rush to its confectionery business, the fifth biggest in the world. In combination with Cadbury, the world’s second-largest sweetmaker, it would challenge Mars-Wrigley for top spot and add strong businesses in rich countries such as Britain and Australia as well as faster-growing developing countries like India, Brazil and Mexico. Together the two firms would have revenues of $50 billion and Kraft estimates that a deal would allow it to lop $625m off its costs each year.If the price has changed a little, the response of Cadbury’s board has not altered one jot. Cadbury originally said that Kraft’s offer “significantly undervalued” the company and was “unappealing”, just as an American’s idea of chocolate is to the British palate. This time round Cadbury’s appetite for a deal is no greater. It “emphatically rejected” Kraft’s direct offer to its shareholders, adding, just for good measure, that it was “derisory”.

[size=0.8em]Kraft is as keen to get hold of Cadbury as the British chocolate-maker is to resist. But some analysts suggest that its shareholders may start to take an interest if Kraft comes back with an improved offer that values the firm at over £8 a share (rather than around £7.17, which is currently on the table). Others suggest that it might take something closer to £9 to attract Cadbury’s investors. That may be too rich for Kraft’s boss, Irene Rosenfeld, who has said that she is determined not to overpay for Cadbury.

[size=0.8em]A drawn-out game is now about to start. British takeover rules give Kraft 28 days to send its formal offer to Cadbury ’s shareholders. After that a 60-day offer-period begins during which Kraft may revise the terms of its bid to garner enough support from shareholders for a deal and Cadbury can argue against the offer. Kraft will undoubtedly raise its offer once it has gauged reaction to its formal bid.

[size=0.8em]The timetable could be upset if a rival bidder were to emerge. Unilever, another global food giant that had been touted as a possible bidder, ruled itself out recently. And Switzerland’s Nestlé, mooted as another possible suitor with America’s Hershey, seems unlikely to step in after recently announcing that it would splash out on a $3 billion share buyback. Even if no rival bid is forthcoming, Kraft, dazzled by the attractions of its quarry, may be tempted to spend too much on Cadbury.

[size=0.8em]from http://www.economist.com/businessfinance/displayStory.cfm?story_id=14838497&source=features_box1. All rights reserved by economist.com.

qqqaaazzzUID：2634671

[size=0.8em]Banyan
Having it both ways  [size=0.7em]Nov 5th 2009
From
The Economist
print edition
Despite protestations to the contrary, China needs NATO to fight in Afghanistan
[size=0.74em]Illustration by M. Morgenstern

[size=0.8em]ONE day early this summer, when it was still possible to claim progress in Afghanistan, Robert Gates, America’s defence secretary, was at an Asian security gathering, reeling off the names of countries who had contributed to it. The list—Canada, Mongolia, Poland—went on and on, while the harrumphing of a Chinese general in the third row grew ever louder. Eventually, he held back no longer. “Why no China?” he demanded. “Where is China on this list?”

[size=0.8em]Where indeed? The question seemed odd. Unlike the other countries on Mr Gates’s list, China has no military presence in Afghanistan. Though China has peacekeepers as far afield as Haiti and Sudan, it is allergic to sending them to neighbouring countries. Perhaps, this columnist later inquired of the general, he meant the modest intelligence that China shares with the United States on jihadists with connections in Xinjiang, China’s restive, preponderantly Muslim, western region? No, he replied testily. “I mean the mine. Our copper mine.”

[size=0.8em]Since then, the mine, at Aynak, a former al-Qaeda stronghold in Logar province just south of Kabul, has shot to prominence. It is the second-biggest untapped source of copper in the world, no less, and China’s $3.5 billion investment, signed in late 2007, is easily Afghanistan’s biggest. Several miles of sandbags and chain-link fence now surround the mine. Row upon row of neat prefabricated dormitories house several hundred Chinese. When production starts, from 2011, the Chinese owners get half the output and a multi-billion-dollar return on their investment.

[size=0.8em]And here the controversy begins. For the mine’s security, in a land that epitomises insecurity, is paid for by others. Some 1,500 Afghan police guard the site, subsidised by the Japanese. The American army’s Tenth Mountain Division patrols the area. As America wobbles over its Afghanistan commitments, Robert Kaplan, an American journalist, puts it thus in the
New York Times: “The problem is that while America is sacrificing its blood and treasure, the Chinese will reap the benefits. The whole direction of America’s military and diplomatic effort is toward an exit strategy, whereas the Chinese hope to stay and profit.”

[size=0.8em]Mr Kaplan acknowledges that exploiting mineral reserves creates Afghan jobs and fills the state exchequer. He says China is not ordained to be America’s adversary. So America’s vision of a moderately stable Afghanistan that no longer harbours extremists is not at odds with China’s vision of a secure conduit for natural resources dug out in Afghanistan or brought up from ports on the Indian Ocean. Still, Mr Kaplan’s opinion, and a more critical strain, which argues that a murky bid process gave China the Aynak mine and that anyway such Chinese projects do not bring local prosperity, has touched a nerve in China. Even calling China “resource-hungry” is inflammatory, says one commentary. It all adds a “precarious element” to Sino-American relations.

[size=0.8em]If that is so, China is partly to blame. A growing chorus in its official press calls for America to admit its blunders and pull its troops out of Afghanistan. And though Hillary Clinton, the secretary of state, recently assured Pakistan it had American support in the face of Taliban terror, China points out that it will be in Pakistan long after the Americans are gone. China prides itself on being Pakistan’s “all-weather” friend, regardless of the prevailing government—civilian and democratic, or military and repressive.

[size=0.8em]For Indian hawks, China’s growing presence in Afghanistan and deep entrenchment in Pakistan, including big infrastructure projects in disputed Kashmir, is all too much. Giving themselves further frights, they point to a letter the China-dominated Shanghai Co-operation Organisation (SCO, which includes Russia and Central Asian members) recently received from the Taliban. It asked for SCO help in driving the American infidels out of Afghanistan. To the hawks, ever sensitive about historical mischief from the north-west, this is another Great Game. So India, too is investing heavily in Afghanistan.

[size=0.8em]Yet for all China’s sneering at America’s military efforts in Afghanistan, China offers no alternative. For now, both countries’ interests are not far apart. China is as concerned as is the United States—and India, for that matter—about the prospect of a return to pre-war days. The arrival in Palau this week of six Uighurs, originally from Xinjiang, and recently freed from prison in Guantánamo, is a reminder. Under the Taliban, Afghanistan had given them shelter. China still shivers at the idea of disaffected Uighurs fleeing to the wilds of Afghanistan or Pakistan to consort with jihadists. American military power so close to China is not welcome in Beijing; Taliban-backed militant havens even less so.

The Pakistani connection
[size=0.8em]Admittedly, for all China’s self-serving efforts to portray Xinjiang as victim of extremist violence by militants linked to al-Qaeda, evidence for this is slim. Chinese concerns about a jihadist movement spreading across its borders from Afghanistan or Pakistan have until now been overblown. A home-grown reaction to Chinese oppression is reason enough to explain Uighur unrest. Yet even Pakistanis have at times been surprised by the vehemence of China’s concerns. When Pakistan’s then military ruler, Pervez Musharraf, visited Beijing in 2003 to sign an extradition treaty between the two countries, he was taken aback by the ferocity of Chinese remonstrances about Uighur militants on Pakistani soil.

[size=0.8em]So China’s signals that it wants limits on the spread of American power in Central Asia should be taken with a pinch of salt. The rhetoric is like that over America’s presence in East Asia: China grumbles about it publicly, but values America for its restraint on Japan. In Afghanistan China grumbles but lets America guard its economic interests. There’s little unusual in that: rising powers have always hitched a ride on the back of declining ones.

[size=0.8em]For more information, please visit http://www.economist.com/world/asia/displayStory.cfm?story_id=14794723 and http://www.yeeyan.com/articles/view/37076/67241, all rights reserved by economist.com and yeeyan.com.

银落UID：2632560

Good word
Gre word
New word
Nice structure
Great idea
Reserve currencies
Cross my palm with euros?
The dollar’s days as the world’s reserve currency are far from over
Nov 11th 2009

ShutterstockWORRIES about the dollar’s dominance of the global monetary system are not new. But debate about replacing the beleaguered dollar, whose trade-weighted value has dropped by 11.5% since its peak （这种表达方式很好。一般大家都喜欢用最高级。用名词来表示很不错）in March 2009, has resurfaced in the wake of a global financial and economic crisis that began in America. China and Russia, which have huge reserves that are mainly dollar denominated, have talked about shifting away from the greenback. India changed the composition of its reserves by buying 200 tonnes of gold from the IMF.

None of this threatens the dominance of the dollar yet, particularly as a dramatic shift out of the currency would be damaging to the countries (such as China) that hold a huge amount of dollar-denominated （一般我们会用定语从句来修饰dollar。会写成hold a huge amount of assets which is denominated by dollar. 但是aw里面需要简练。因此。这种组词方法是特别好的。~）

assets. But a new paper by（省略动词） economists at the IMF, released on Wednesday November 11th, acknowledges that the global crisis has reignited the debate about anchoring the world’s monetary system on one country’s currency.

Some say that America’s role as the principal（请回忆一连串的重要，eg：crucial important consequent essential necessary vital significant major main momentous staple central）issuer of the global reserve currency gives it an unfair advantage. America has a unique ability to borrow from foreigners in its own currency, and wins when the dollar depreciates, since its assets are mainly in foreign currency and its liabilities in dollars. By one estimate America enjoyed a net capital gain of around $1 trillion from the gradual depreciation of the dollar in the years before the crisis.

In a sense the world is hostage to America’s ability to maintain the value of the dollar. But as the IMF points out, the currency’s primacy arises at least partly because China and other emerging countries have chosen to accumulate dollar reserves. The depth of America’s financial markets and the country’s open capital account have made the dollar attractive.(多多变换句型。估计很多人用it is attractive for dollar because of the depth of america’s financial markets and the country’s open captical account) So some of the advantage has been earned.

But large and persistent surpluses in countries like China mean continued demand for American assets, reducing the need for fiscal adjustment by either country. This, in turn, has contributed to the build-up of the macroeconomic imbalances that many blame for the financial crisis.

Dealing with these imbalances could begin by finding ways to reduce reserve accumulation in emerging countries. The IMF reckons that about two-thirds of current reserves (about $4 trillion-$4.5 trillion) are held by countries as insurance against shocks, including sudden reversals of capital flows, banking crises and so on. In theory, groups of countries could pool reserves, so that a smaller amount would suffice than if countries each maintain their own buffers. Other alternatives include precautionary lines of credit, such as the American Federal Reserve’s with the central banks of Brazil and Mexico, or the IMF’s flexible credit line.

But what are the alternatives to relying on the dollar? One possibility is a system with several competing reserve currencies. Over time, the euro and China’s yuan (if it became convertible) could emerge as competitors. This would require a great deal of policy co-ordination among issuing countries. But by having several reserve currencies the “privilege” that America now enjoys would be available more widely, providing an incentive to compete to attract users to different currencies.

Another alternative is a greater reliance on SDRs, the IMF’s quasi-currency, which operates as a claim on a basket of currencies: the dollar, euro, sterling and yen. Because the SDR’s value depends on several currencies, it shares many of the benefits of a multiple-currency system. But even the IMF says that using SDRs seems “doubtful unless the system…fails in a major way”.

The most radical solution of all is a new global currency that could be used in international transactions and would float alongside domestic currencies. The fund argues that this would have to be issued by a new international monetary institution “disconnected from the economic problems of any individual country”. This currency could serve as a risk-free global asset.

Radical as this may sound （好句型。。倒装）, it is not a new idea. John Maynard Keynes had something similar in mind when he proposed an International Clearing Union. This global bank would issue its own currency, called the bancor, in which all trade accounts would be settled. In the absence of such a bank the world will have to make do with the current system. So worries about the dollar’s value aside, its global dominance is secure for now.

From Economist.com

Review~
Greenback 美钞
Precautionary lines 警戒线
Quasi- 准

StefanaUID：2143510

Very sad story, depression is a very big problem around the world and deserves a lot of respect.
I love the last sentence,that's way I marked it in purple.




From Times Online
November 11, 2009

Widow of suicide goalkeeper Robert Enke tells how he hid depression

The widow of Germany's national goalkeeper, Robert Enke, choked back tears as she described how he lived a life of fear before throwing himself in front of the train that killed him.
The suicide has stunned Germany and triggered a debate about the concealment of mental illlness in high-profile competitive sport. A friendly game against Chile on Saturday has been cancelled as a mark of respect.
The 32-year-old keeper had been fighting for years against clinical depression but had been determined to keep it secret lest it spell the end of his footballing career, said his widow Teresa. Most of all he was afraid that the ensuing publicity would lead to the authorities cancelling their adoption of a new-born baby last May.
"When he was acutely depressive, it was difficult," said his 30 year old widow, dressed all in black, "Difficult above all because he didn't want anything to get out. That's the way he wanted it, because he was terrified of losing his sport."
Mrs Enke appeared at a press conference organised by her husband's old club Hannover 96. Although officials stressed that it was her own decision to talk to reporters less than 24 hours after the suicide, it was plain that the club wanted to demonstrate it had not put Enke under pressure or encouraged him to hide his illness. They were simply unaware of a problem.
"We were very close, yet even I didn't notice how acute was the threat," said Valentin Markser, Enke's therapist, who had been treating him since 2003. "He knew how to hide the scope of his illness, had developed defence mechanisms."
A suicide letter was found on the passenger seat of his abandoned Mercedes jeep, in which Enke apologised to his wife and to his doctor for not revealing the true depth of his depression, and expressed his sense that there was no alternative.
That morning, before setting out for goalkeeper training, Enke had rung his doctors and told them he was breaking off treatment since he felt well enough to carry on. After training he appears to have driven around and then, at about 6pm, he parked close to a level crossing. It was a place where he would go sometimes with his four dogs and was only about 2.5 km away from his home.
As the train approached at 160 km per hour, the keeper left the note and his wallet on the side seat of his car, the doors unlocked as if he had just popped out to buy a newspaper, and lay down on the tracks.
Dr Markser said that football had if anything helped Enke control his depressive phases.
His widow agreed: "It was what he lived for, it was life elixir, and knowing how much it meant to him I would go with Robert to the training sessions."
Yet it was also the fear of failure on the pitch that contributed to Enke's condition.
When he came to me in 2003 he was suffereing from depressive bouts and failure anxieties," said Dr Markser.
"I treated him for months on an almost daily basis so that by the Spring of 2004 he could play again in Spain and then in Hanover."
He appeared to stabilise, but this October he was hit by a stomach virus that weakened him. He slipped from the national squad for several matches, even though the trainer stressed that he was the first choice as goalkeeper for Germany in the 2010 World Cup squad. He was being groomed as the natural successor to goalkeeping veterans Oliver Kahn and Jens Lehman.
The combination of high expectations and his own sense of physical weakness, the nagging fear that his mental state would somehow be revealed, all compounded his depression.
And none of his co-players noticed anything. "When I discussed it with them on Wednesday morning they were genuinely flabbergasted, really moved, needed to discuss the implications seriously among themselves," said Theo Zwanziger, chairman of the German Football Association.
A similar fate befell one of Germany's most talented players, Sebastian Dreisler, who dropped out of the game in 2007, at the age of 27, because of the impossibility of balancing a depressive condition and keeping up an act.
"In the cabin of Bayern Muenchen you only succeed if you say - 'I'm the greatest'," said Mr Dreisler, who is no longer a sportsman.
"You pump yourself up and repress your true feelings. On the one side there was my talent and ambition, on the other this feeling that you can't do anything."
But the crucial factor for Robert Enke, said his widow, was the deep fear that everything was about to crumble: not only the football career but also his family.
Three years ago, the couple had lost their two year old daughter Lara. She had a serious heart defect and had spent much of her life in intensive care.
"You live with the knowledge that if a call comes from a nurse at midnight, it is to tell you to come and say your farewells to your daughter," said Enke in a 2007 interview. "That's when you start to fear the sound of a telephone."
Today Mrs Enke said:"After Lara's death we were fused together, and we thought we can do this together. I told him all the time, we'll find a solution."
In May, they adopted Leila - but his fears for the new child, however healthy, piled unforeseen pressures on the goalkeeper.
"He didn't want to seek professional help any more, and he didn't want it because he was afraid that it would all come out -and that we would lose Leila," said his widow.
"It was the fear about what people would say about a child with a depressive father. And I always told him - don't worry. Right to the end he cared lovingly for Leila."
Ms Enke's repressed tears broke out when she accepted that her husband's suicide was a kind of personal defeat.
"We thought that we could do it all, that with love everything was possible. But sometimes it's not enough."

StefanaUID：2143510

这个文章结构挺清晰的。下划线标出来的是各段TS。

Hispanic higher education

Closing the gap

Improving performance is linked in part to immigration policy

Nov 5th 2009 | el paso

THE University of Texas-El Paso (UTEP) is one of the most binational of America’s big universities. Some 90% of its students come from the borderplex—the Texan city of El Paso and its much larger sister-city, Ciudad Juárez, on the Mexican side of the Rio Grande. More than 70% of its students are Mexican or Mexican-American.

And that, in turn, means that the El Paso campus is rather different from the University of Texas’s flagship campus in Austin. More than half of UTEP students are among the first in their families to go to college, and roughly a third come from families with incomes below $20,000 a year. Diana Natalicio, UTEP’s president, says that for many of her students trouble at work, or an unexpected expense, can derail a whole year of college. UTEP tries to help, offering after-hours advice and instalment plans for tuition fees. Such measures have helped it to become one of the country’s leading sources of degrees for Hispanic students.

UTEP’s experience provides pointers for college administrators elsewhere, who are looking for ways to close the gap in achievement between Hispanic and “Anglo” students. According to a report in October from the Pew Hispanic Centre, 89% of Latino high-school students say that a college degree is important, but only 48% plan to go to university themselves. Hispanic students are more likely to drop out of high school than Anglos, and those who finish are less likely to go on to college. Those who go are more likely to enroll in two-year community colleges, which have lower rates of completion than four-year universities. In 2007, according to the National Centre for Education Statistics, only 7.5% of bachelor’s degrees were awarded to Hispanic students, even though Latinos made up about 15% of the American population that year.

Most Latino college students are native-born Americans, but the Mexican-born students have a hard time, and youngsters without the right documents have the hardest time of all. Stella Flores, of Vanderbilt University in Tennessee, argues that the best thing that can be done at the state level is to adopt policies that allow all of a state’s high-school students to pay fees at its public universities at the discounted rate that normally applies to people from that state, regardless of their legal status.

Such policies already exist in a number of states, including California and Texas, where the Latino population is so large that few like the idea of denying a proper education to crowds of undocumented youngsters. A federal bill called the DREAM Act would expand that approach and provide some undocumented students with a path to citizenship, but it is hardly at the top of the long to-do list now facing Congress. Separately, measures are afoot to expand federal financial aid to students, and over the summer President Barack Obama announced that the federal government is to put about $12 billion into community colleges.

In the meantime, Deborah Santiago of Excelencia in Education, a non-profit research group, says that some good steps are free. For example, El Camino College in California holds pronunciation classes for staff who might otherwise struggle with Hispanic names. When students are crossing the stage to get their diplomas, they should not have their names butchered in front of the gathered family and friends.

The Economist Newspaper | United States

tracywlzUID：2522388

过来顶一下。我也要跟着ste阅读~
这楼不是水滴啊

我会贴上的~

银落UID：2632560

恩。。跟在水水后面继续占楼
。。fana哇。。。某只的那楼不水了呢。。已经改成economist了。。》《。。。
这楼到时候也会编辑。。~。。。放心吧。。
绝对不水好帖子。。

StefanaUID：2143510

豆瓣电台在放maximillian Hecker的Birch，感觉很适合再做一篇阅读。
上午在图书馆收纳书四本，这个星期有活干了。哈，撒花欢迎水水跟落落加入阅读大贴。
差点把自己的帖子水了，话不多说咯，上文章！

蓝色——不记得或者词义记得不确切的词
紫红——提炼出来的短语
绿色——用法值得学习的词语或者短语
下划线——写法值得学习的句子

The Berlin Wall
So much gained, so much to loseNov 5th 2009
From The Economist print edition

Over the past 20 years economic freedom has outpaced political liberty. Neither should be taken for granted
“OF ALL places it was in divided Berlin in divided Germany in divided Europe that the cold war erupted into an east-west street party,” this newspaper observed 20 years ago (see article). Even to those who had been confident of the eventual triumph of the West, the fall of the Berlin Wall was surprisingly accidental. When 200,000 East Germans took advantage of Hungary’s decision to open its borders and fled to the West, their communist government decided to modify the travel restrictions that imprisoned them. Asked about the timing, the unbriefed propaganda minister mumbled: “As far as I know, effective immediately.” When that was reported on television, the Berliners were off. Baffled border guards who would have shot their "comrades” a week earlier let the crowd through—and a barrier that had divided the world was soon being gleefully dismantled. West Germany’s chancellor, Helmut Kohl, was so unready for history that he was out of the country.
The destruction of the Iron Curtain on November 9th 1989 is still the most remarkable political event of most people’s lifetimes: it set free millions of individuals and it brought to an end a global conflict that threatened nuclear annihilation. For liberals in the West, it still stands as a reminder both of what has been won since and what is still worth fighting for.

Remember the Stasi, but don’t forget the fridgesYet the past two decades have seen economic freedom advance further than political freedom. Talk 20 years ago of a peaceful new world order has disappeared. New divisions have emerged out of nationalism, religion or just “fear of the other”. Rather than making the case for democracy unassailable, plenty of countries, including, alas, a few of the old Warsaw Pact members, most of the Arab world and China, have been able to run shamelessly repressive authoritarian regimes. When Western leaders visit Moscow, Riyadh or Beijing, they merely mumble about human rights. The presumption has become that such regimes will endure.
By contrast, “globalisation”, that awkward term that covers the freer movement of goods, capital, people and ideas around the globe, has become the governing principle of commerce. That does not mean it is universally accepted: witness the travails of the Doha round of trade talks. But few places openly oppose it. In the economic sphere, illiberalism usually has to disguise itself through governments trying to adapt it, stressing “capitalism with Chinese characteristics”, “stakeholder capitalism”, “fair trade” and so on. Even after the crunch, the commercial classes assume that the world will become more integrated: who can resist economic logic and technology?
It is not hard to see why such a presumption should exist. Consider two successes of economic liberalism, both somewhat under-appreciated at the moment. The first is its role 20 years ago (see article). The East Berliners rushing to the West were not just fleeing the Stasi; they also came in search of fridges, jeans and Coca-Cola from supermarkets. By then communism, for all its tanks and missiles, was plainly a less efficient economic machine. Mikhail Gorbachev deserves credit for allowing so many serfs to escape so peacefully; but the Soviet Union crumbled because it could not produce the goods.
And even if the current round of globalisation technically began before the wall fell, it was spurred on by it. (The word seldom appeared in The Economist before 1986 and began to be common only in the 1990s.) Globalisation would have meant much less if half of Europe had been bricked in; many instinctively statist giants of the emerging world, such as Brazil, India or even China, would have been far slower to open up their economies if a semi-credible alternative had still existed.
That points to the second under-appreciated success. At present capitalism is too often judged by the excesses of a few bankers. But when historians come to write about the past quarter-century, Lehman Brothers and Sir Fred “the Shred” Goodwin will account for fewer pages than the 500m people dragged out of absolute poverty into something resembling the middle class. Their success is not just a wonderful thing in itself—the greatest leap forward in economic history. It has also helped spur on other chaotic freedoms: look at the way ideas, good, bad and mad, are texted around the world.
For in the end, no matter what China’s leaders tell Mr Obama when he visits Beijing later this month, economic and political liberty are linked—not as tightly as people hoped 20 years ago, but still linked. Look forward, and China’s internet-obsessed emerging middle class will surely have an appetite for liberty beyond the purely economic. Change could happen as unexpectedly as it did in 1989. Even the most fearsome fortresses of repression can eventually be breached. Then it was Honecker and Ceausescu; tomorrow it might be Castro, Ahmadinejad or Mugabe; one day Chávez or even Hu.
Marx to marketPut another way, the presumption that political freedom will never catch up with economic freedom could turn out to be joyously wrong. The problem is that this gap could also be closed another way. Economic freedom could be slowed down, perhaps even reversed, by politics.
For Western liberals, even ones who believe in open markets as unreservedly as this paper, that means facing up to some hard facts about the popularity of their creed. Western capitalism’s victory over its rotten communist rival does not ensure it an enduring franchise from voters. As Karl Marx pointed out during globalisation’s last great surge forward in the 19th century, the magic of comparative advantage can be wearing—and cruel. It leaves behind losers in concentrated clumps (a closed tyre factory, for instance), whereas the more numerous winners (everybody driving cheaper cars) are disparate. It makes the wealthy very wealthy: in a global market, you will hit a bigger jackpot than in a local one. And capitalism has always been prone to spectacular booms and busts.
Above all politics remains stubbornly local. All that economic integration has not been matched politically. And to the extent that there is a global guarantor of the current system, it is America, a country which as globalisation works will continue to lose relative power. Thanks to its generosity in exporting the secrets of success, it now has China closer to its shoulder and other emerging giants are catching up. Public support for protectionism has surged in the United States.
In the affairs of man, wounded pride and xenophobia often trump economic reason. Why else would Russia terrorise its gas customers? Or Britons demonise the EU? In a rational world China would not stir up Japanophobia and rich Saudis would not help Islamic extremists abroad. Many businesspeople, too busy on their BlackBerrys to worry about nationalism or fundamentalism, might ponder Keynes’s description of a prosperous Londoner before August 1914: sipping his morning tea in bed, ordering goods from around the world over the telephone, regarding that age of globalisation as “normal, certain, and permanent, except in the direction of further improvement” and dismissing “the politics of militarism” and “racial and cultural rivalries” as mere “amusements in his daily newspaper”.
Be prepared, be very preparedRecognising the political shortcomings of globalisation should redouble Western liberals’ determination to defend it: to close the gap in the right way. That involves a myriad of things, from promoting human rights to designing better jobs policies (see article). But it also requires defending the enormous benefits that capitalism has brought the world since 1989 more forcefully than the West’s leaders have done thus far. And above all perhaps, taking nothing for granted.

Review:
dismantle：拆除, 剥除, 分解, 取消
chancellor: (英)名誉校长，(美)大学校长；(德)总理
nuclear annihilation: 核毁灭
unassiailable: 攻不破的(无争论余地的, 无懈可击的)
stakeholder: someone entrusted to hold the stakes for two or more persons betting against one another; must deliver the stakes to the winner
jackpot: 彩票头等奖，极大的成功
xenophobia：仇外，排外

StefanaUID：2143510

撒花欢迎Bela加入阅读大贴~


From Times Online

November 12, 2009


Kirsty Moore, first woman Red Arrows pilot, was inspired by her father
The first woman to become a Red Arrows pilot said today she had been inspired to join the RAF by her father.
Flight Lieutenant Kirsty Moore, 32, was speaking for the first time since she made history by joining the prestigious aerobatics display team in September.
She paid tribute to her father Robbie Stewart, a retired Tornado navigator. “My dad is immensely proud. He encouraged me to join the RAF,” she said. “He is one of those people who everyone loves and I keep on bumping into people who say they know him. Nobody has ever had a bad word to say about him.”
Flight Lieutenant Moore has completed two operational tours of Iraq with a Tornado squadron based at RAF Marham in Norfolk and it was there that she first thought about joining the display team, which puts on 80-90 shows across the world every year.
She joined the RAF in 1998 after studying aeronautical engineering at Imperial College, London. She is been married to Nicky Moore, 34, who is still a flying instructor at RAF Valley.
Flight Lieutenant Moore said: “It’s an awesome job. To be told I had been selected was one of the best days of my life. It was incredible.
“The girl thing is an aside for me because I have been a female all my life and I’ve been a pilot since joining the RAF.
“I know for outsiders it is a big thing but for me it is about timing and someone was always going to be the first woman to join the Red Arrows. I’m lucky enough it’s happened to me and I’m very proud.
The flame-haired pilot said: “You can get ribbed for almost everything and the boys will pick up on anything so my hair colour gets a mention but as long as I’ve got something to come back with, then everything’s OK.”
Squadron Leader Ben Murphy, said she was selected for her calm personality as well as her skills as a pilot.
“It is a milestone for the Red Arrows but, that said, we do have female aircrew in all our squadrons and this is a great way of getting the message across to women thinking of joining the Red Arrows,” he said.
“She is very calm under pressure but Red Arrow pilots also have to be able to do the job on the ground as well as the flying job and she has a very calm and level-headed approach.”