【CASK EFFECT】1006G阅读全方位锻炼--越障【Economist】 2-12

lghscuUID: 2552043

【CASK EFFECT】1006G阅读全方位锻炼--越障【Economist】 2-12  

继草木也知愁【SCI】系列特推出【Economist】，旨在培养阅读的习惯。
阅读不是实力的较量，是习惯的比拼
“规则：0 u, r. g$ C/ d+ [4 f5 C* B, J" n/ v5 W* u. f
% K  N9 u8 C/ `6 A0 b
我每天贴出1000字左右的一篇文字
没有别的要求，只要大家坚持读完就可以如果你能坚持一个月，你会发现自己的阅读进化了 [注]
1
直接在电脑屏幕面前做，虽然GRE阅读是在纸上考，但是这个过程会遏制你做笔记，同时给你的阅读造成视觉障碍，也就是把难度训练和抗干扰训练同步结合，增加效率（初期会很累，但是既然大家想要成为高手，那么就别对自己太温柔）
2
所采用文章部分来自寄托天下版油发贴，在此谢谢所有的版油”


A history of the world in 100 objects
Creative impulsesDec 30th 2009
From The Economist print edition
A new BBC radio series shows how the things that man made can be even more compelling witnesses to the past than the events he witnessed
British Museum
MAN is one of a number of animals that make things, but man is the only one that depends for its very survival on the things he has made. That simple observation is the starting point for an ambitious history programme that the BBC will begin broadcasting on January 18th in which it aims to tell a history of the world through 100 objects in the British Museum (BM). A joint venture four years in the making between the BM and the BBC, the series features 100 15-minute radio broadcasts, a separate 13 episodes in which children visit the museum at night and try to unlock its mysteries, a BBC World Service package of tailored omnibus editions for broadcasting around the world and an interactive digital programme involving 350 museums in Britain which will be available free over the internet.
The presenter is Neil MacGregor, the BM’s director, who has moved from the study of art to the contemplation of things. “Objects take you into the thought world of the past,” he says. “When you think about the skills required to make something you begin to think about the brain that made it.” From the first moment (the ghostly magnetic pulse from a star that exploded in the summer of 1054, as recorded at the Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics) this series is radio at its best: inventive, clever, and yet always light on its feet.


In the mid-17th century Archbishop James Ussher, an Irish prelate and scholar, totted up the lifespans of all the prophets mentioned in the Old Testament and concluded that the world had been created on the night preceding October 23rd 4004BC. Mr MacGregor, a more modern historian, begins nearly 1.8m years before that with the Swiss Army knife of the stone age, a handaxe found by Louis Leakey at Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania in the 1930s.
Discovering how to chip stones to make a tool that would cut flesh was the moment man learned to be an opportunist. Once invented, the handaxe would hardly change over 1m years. It became a passport to the world, and was carried from east Africa to Libya, Israel, India, Korea and even to a gravel pit near Heathrow airport where one was buried 600,000 years ago.
Mr MacGregor is less interested in advertising the marvels of the 250-year-old universal museum he heads than in considering who made the objects he discusses. That involves drawing together evidence of how connected seemingly disparate societies have always been and rebalancing the histories of the literate and the non-literate. “Victors write history; the defeated make things,” he says. This is an especially important distinction when considering Africa. The great “Encyclopedia Britannica” of 1911 assumed that Africa had no history because it had no written history. The statues of black pharaohs that Mr MacGregor discusses in an early programme, for example, are the best visual evidence that a Nubian tribe once seized control of ancient Egypt and that Africans ruled over the Nile for more than a century.
The BM’s curators spent two years choosing the objects Mr MacGregor examines. In particular, they sought out things that would help him draw out universal themes. Periclean Athens, Confucian China and Achaemenid Iran existed at more-or-less the same time, between 500BC and 450BC. By examining objects from each place, Mr MacGregor is able to compare three different ways of constructing a highly efficient state and nimbly reassesses Athens in the context of the Persia it was fighting and the China it did not yet know.
The importance of trade is another theme. A 16th-century Aztec mosaic of a double-headed serpent (pictured above) exemplifies the way cultures have long been connected through the movement of people and ideas. It is, he says, “a document of the tribute system of the empire”, with pieces of turquoise from mines that were over 1,000 miles apart, white teeth carved from shells found on both coasts of Mexico, and red details made out of Spondylus, a thorny oyster shell found 60 metres below the surface of the sea.
Silver pieces of eight were another passport to trade, and, as the first object of a global economy, a key step in the history of money. Minted in South America from the end of the 15th century, they crossed both the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. So widely were these silver coins used that interruptions in the production of silver in Mexico and Peru had a severe knock-on effect. In Europe silver shortages led to a sudden massive expansion of the money supply and the hyperinflation of the mid-17th century. In China they helped cause the collapse of the Ming dynasty.
Mr MacGregor also uses coins, the simplest common sign of a centralised rule, to explore the personification of power as well as the history of money and of trade. In the Middle East the head of the Byzantine emperor was stamped on coins for several centuries. But in the early 690s, for example, Umayyad dinars from Damascus suddenly switched from displaying heads of rulers to showing the shahada, the declaration of belief in the oneness of Allah. It was the first time political power, as represented by coinage, was connected to a set of unchanging universal ideas rather than a person.
Religion as a way of organising different interests in societies is another theme. How and why, for example, did different religions acquire their own particular look? Why does God in Judaism and Islam have no face while Buddha is a cross-legged man? And when do you begin seeing the connection between the food that man ate and the gods he worshipped? When man started farming at the end of the ice age was the moment his gods began farming too. Dependent on regular seasons, man prayed for rain, and, in Honduras, started making statues of maize gods.
Freedom and the battles against slavery and totalitarianism dominate the 20th century. A Russian imperial porcelain plate showing a Leninist worker trampling on capital and taking over a factory is one starting point, as is a suffragette penny, with “Votes for Women” stamped across the head of King Edward VII. Closer to our own time, Mr MacGregor describes a chair made from decommissioned guns collected since the Mozambique civil war ended in 1992, including AK-47s (both Russian and Czech), a second-world-war Sten gun and a Belgian assault rifle. The BM’s throne of weapons provides a neat symbol of the postcolonial moment when the Soviets and the West fought their proxy wars across the continent.
Of the 100 objects, only one has not been selected yet. Mr MacGregor is waiting until the last possible moment to pick out the best symbol of our own time. Suggestions, please, on a postcard to: British Museum, London WC1B 3DG.

river1112UID: 2666300

1)Compelling adj. 强制的，引人注目的，令人信服的=congent
A new BBC radio series shows how the things that man made can be even more compelling witnesses to the past than the events he witnessed
2)Unlock vt. 开启，显露，放开//unfold徐徐展开
unlock its mysteries,
3)tailored adj. 特制的，合身的 //yalor sth to one's needs
4)omnibusn. 公共汽车，公共马车，// 精选集 / /综合性的，总括的
5)Contemplation n. 注视，沉思，打算
6)Light on one’s feet脚步轻快
7)Archbishop 总教主
8)Prelate n. 高位神职者，高位教士
9) Tot up合计
  In the mid-17th century Archbishop James Ussher, an Irish prelate and scholar, totted up the lifespans of all the prophets mentioned in the Old Testament and concluded that the world had been created on the night preceding October 23rd 4004BC.
10) Old Testment   n. 基督教的《旧约全书》
11)Chip v. 屑，切(成碎片)，形成(缺口)
  Discovering how to chip stones to make a tool that would cut flesh was the moment man learned to be an opportunist.
12)Draw together 靠拢
13)Disparate adj. 不同的，全异的，乖离的(dissident意见不同的，diverse多种多样的，different不同的，disparate迥异的...写作文的时候可以互换！)
  That involves drawing together evidence of how connected seemingly disparate societies have always been and rebalancing the histories of the literate and the non-literate.
14）Pharaoh法老
15）Curator n. (博物馆、展览馆等的)馆长，主持
17）Draw out  抽出，拉出，拉长，取出//引申为“提炼，概括，总结”
  In particular, they sought out things that would help him draw out universal themes.
18）Nimbly灵活的
   By examining objects from each place, Mr MacGregor is able to compare three different ways of constructing a highly efficient state and nimbly reassesses Athens in the context of the Persia it was fighting and the China it did not yet know.
19）Serpent . 蛇，蛇一般的人，狡猾的人
20）exemplify举例（=case in point/for example）
  The importance of trade is another theme. A 16th-century Aztec mosaic of a double-headed serpent (pictured above) exemplifies the way cultures have long been connected through the movement of people and ideas.
21) Mint铸造 mint the coin
22)Centralise集权
23)Personification  n. 拟人，具体化，化身
Mr MacGregor also uses coins, the simplest common sign of a centralised rule, to explore the personification of power as well as the history of money and of trade.
24)Stamp on vt. 用脚踩(拒绝)
25)Leninist列宁主义
26)Trample v. 践踏，轻视  
A Russian imperial porcelain plate showing a Leninist worker trampling on capital and taking over a factory is one starting point,
27)Decommission使…退役
28)Proxy代理的 proxy war代理战争，傀儡战争
At one’s best 处于最佳状态