Economist里面的GRE单词

GenevUID：2543794

整篇转载的理由:

1. 这篇可以做G阅读
里面提到El Nino 终于想明白这边为什么叫eastern Pacific
原来是靠近Far East的原因

2. 我就是environmental pessimist

3. 我还是hard determinist...

Climatology
Historical determinismMar 12th 2009 | DALAT
From The Economist print edition
Tree rings are laying bare the climatic history of Asia
THE idea that climate change will lead to war is often raised by environmental pessimists, and a meeting on the climatic past of South-East Asia, held last month in Dalat, Vietnam, suggests it is not such an unlikely thought. The meeting was organised by the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, part of Columbia University, some of whose researchers have been trying to reconstruct the pattern of South-East Asia’s monsoons over the past few centuries. One matter they raised was the possibility that two periods of conflict in the area, in the 15th and 18th centuries, were provoked by droughts.

Historical records of the climate in Asia are lamentable outside India, where the weather-obsessed British collected good data during the 19th and 20th centuries. The observatory’s researchers had therefore to rely on tree rings.



This is hard in South-East Asia. Many of the larger, and therefore older specimens in the area’s forests have been logged. Even among those that remain, seasonal differences in the rings’ growth rates are less noticeable than those that mark summer and winter in temperate climes. Ironically, the diversity of species in tropical forests also presents dendroclimatologists with problems. They would prefer just one or two types of tree, so that they could compare several samples of each more easily.

Nevertheless, Brendan Buckley, one of the observatory’s researchers, found that a conifer called Fokienia hodginsii, which can live for more than 1,000 years, gave him the marker he needed. Using it, he has built up a series of tree-ring chronologies from Thailand and Vietnam that indicate a period of severe drought across mainland South-East Asia in the early 1400s.

This was the period when the city of Angkor in present-day Cambodia went into rapid decline, a fact that some historians have blamed on invasions by the rival Siamese and Champa kingdoms. Dr Buckley’s data, however, suggest another possibility—that Angkor’s canals and reservoirs ran dry and that the invasions were therefore a consequence of decline, rather than its cause. Similarly, another prolonged drought in the 18th century, which was noted by foreign visitors to Siam (modern-day Thailand), coincided with a series of political upheavals that included the sacking of the Siamese capital by Burmese invaders.

The question is what causes such droughts in South-East Asia? El Niño, a periodic warming of the eastern Pacific Ocean, is part of the answer. It corresponds with a weaker south-west monsoon and a longer dry season. It cannot, however, be the whole explanation. Dr Buckley’s tree cores show that the 18th-century drought in Siam lasted 30 years or more. That should have corresponded with a warmer Pacific but according to Kevin Anchukaitis, another of the observatory’s researchers, data from coral suggest it did not.

The answer may lie in the Indian Ocean, which also influences monsoon patterns, rather than in the Pacific, and there is some evidence that the Indian Ocean was indeed cooler during the 18th-century drought. The details, though, remain obscure—which serves as a reminder of just how much remains to be found out before even the local climate truly becomes explicable.

http://www.economist.com/science/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13277399

GenevUID：2543794

唱歌唱得好也是很重要的
这是size up一只鸟或一个人的标准... ...

Parasitology
The song does not remain the sameMar 19th 2009
From The Economist print edition
Birdsong reveals the past as well as the present
LIKE many people, birds sing to show off. Singing demands neurological sophistication and physical stamina and is thus a good signal of what fine mates (and bad opponents) they would make.
A recent paper in Behavioral Ecology, though, goes one step further. It suggests that singing not only demonstrates how healthy a bird is, but how healthy it was. In avians, as in humans, the effects of childhood ailments can linger into adult life. And that shows up in their song.
The paper’s authors, Linda Bischoff of the University of Bern in Switzerland and her colleagues, looked at great tits nesting in boxes in a Swiss forest. As the birds’ eggs started to hatch, they removed both the nestlings and the nests from the boxes. They microwaved the nests to kill any parasites and then returned both nests and nestlings. Then they infested half the nests with 60 hen fleas each.
Despite their name, hen fleas are happy to suck blood from other birds. But they do not (as, for example, lice do) live on their hosts continually. Once a bird fledges, therefore, it leaves its parasites behind.
Altogether, Dr Bischoff and her colleagues studied 22 males over the course of six years. Thirteen of these birds came from infested nests and 9 from nests that were free of parasites. They tracked these males, recorded their songs and monitored their behaviour.
Their first observation was that the songs of those males that had suffered fleas in early life were a third shorter than those sung by the others. The once-infested were also less quick off the mark when the time came to sing. Male great tits respond to the calls of other males by calling back rapidly, and thus overlapping the incoming call with their own. By playing recordings of calls to the males they were monitoring, the team found that those which had been flea-free managed to overlap with almost two-thirds of the outsider’s call, whereas the others managed to cover less than half of it.
These discoveries complement those of Karen Spencer at Bristol University. Her work revealed that males who did not get enough food as nestlings have a smaller range of songs. They do not, though, sing less or fail to react rapidly to encroaching opponents. That suggests hunger and parasites affect song in different ways—a fact that tits are, no doubt, acutely aware of when they size each other up.

size up
To make an estimate, an opinion, a judgment of:

估计做出一种估计、看法或判断：
She sized up her opponent.
她评估她的对手

whinnyUID：189834

读一遍Genev读过的文章，整理了一下词汇。不过，不太喜欢科技文。喜欢时事政治的。
Monsoon： seasonal wind in S Asia, esp in the Indian Ocean, blowing from SW from April to October and from NE from October to April （南亚的）季风
Lamentable:
令人惋惜的，悔恨的
Obsess: .着迷
observatory’s: 天文台
LOG：记录数据
Dendroclimatologist： dendro- 是一个跟冻土有关的词根吧。
Conifer：针叶树

第二篇，小鸟唱歌

stamina
/ ˈstæmɪnə; ˋstæmənə/ n [U] ability to endure much physical or mental strain; long-lasting energy and resilience; staying-power 精力; 耐力; 韧劲:

avian ：adj. 鸟类的
infest：
大批出没
Louse/lice n. 虱子, 白虱

overlap
[ˌəuvəˈlæp, ˈəuvəlæp]

v.(与…)部分重叠(相同) n.重叠(的部分)

encroach
[inˈkrəutʃ]

vt.侵犯

我自己也读一篇
插图挺有意思，是个swf，贴不上来，大家自己点啊。
http://www.economist.com/world/britain/displayStory.cfm?story_id=13395767&source=features_box4
Economist theme park
The Economist Group expandsApr 1st 2009
From Economist.com
Explore a clickable map of The Economist's new theme park
AS PART of a strategy designed to broaden the revenue base, leverage content over new platforms and promote The Economist brand to a young and dynamic audience, The Economist Group is delighted to announce the development of a public-entertainment facility that combines the magic of a theme park with the excitement of macroeconomics. After six months of negotiations with the British government, The Economist Group can confirm that Econoland will be built on a former industrial estate in East London, close to the beating heart of the City and thus to a large potential market of financial-sector employees. Thanks to issues relating to its previous use, the site has been acquired at an advantageous price. Most of the toxic wastes have been cleared and levels of carcinogens appear to have returned to normal. High unemployment in the area will only increase the facility's attractions, as former City workers seek to recapture some of the excitement they enjoyed in their professional life. Heavy investment in security and a landscaped moat and electric fence will neutralize any potential threat from the growing anarchist presence.
Among the thrilling experiences Econoland will offer are:
The currency high-roller: Float like a butterfly with the euro and drop like a stone with the pound! Chamber of horrors: Tremble at the wailing of distressed debt! Fiscal fantasyland: Watch the economy shrivel before your very eyes as you struggle to stop growth falling! Bankrupt Britain: Pit your wits against the government as you try to sink sterling and bring the country to its knees! The Severe Contest: Try your strength against a bear market!
“Econoland will appeal to the kid in everyone”, said a spokesman for The Economist Group, “although children themselves will not be admitted”. The park will open on April 1st.

whinnyUID：189834

Promises of ‘Fresh Start’ for U.S.-Russia Relations

LONDON — President Obama and President Dmitri A. Medvedev of Russia, in their first meeting, vowed a “fresh start” in relations and announced their intention to cooperate on a variety of issues, beginning with negotiations on a new arms control treaty.

In seeking to recast a relationship that has been teetering on the brink of a new cold war, the two leaders also promised to work together on the war in Afghanistan and efforts to rein in Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Appearing after a 70-minute session here, the two struck a warm tone.

“What we’re seeing today is the beginning of new progress in the U.S.-Russian relations,” Mr. Obama said. “And I think that President Medvedev’s leadership is, and has been, critical in allowing that progress to take place.”

The relationship has suffered in recent years over a series of issues, from missile defense to NATO expansion to Russia’s invasion of the Georgian territory of South Ossetia.

Mr. Obama conceded that there remained “real differences” between the countries. But he said he had no intention of “papering over those differences,” which he said had developed because “the relationship between our two countries has been allowed to drift.”
papering over:掩盖，纸上谈兵
Mr. Obama, who is making his debut on the world stage this week at the Group of 20 economic summit meeting, spent Wednesday engaged in a series of firsts: besides his first meeting with Mr. Medvedev, he also met with Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace and with President Hu Jintao of China.

He defended the United States from French and German criticism that Washington was trying to bully others into pumping more money into economic stimulus programs. And he tried to sound optimistic that the Group of 20 meeting on Thursday, which is already featuring a schism between the United States and Europe over deregulation and spending, would accomplish something more than posturing.
BULLY:
恃强欺弱者 vt.威吓，欺负
“I am absolutely confident that this meeting will reflect enormous consensus about the need to work in concert to deal with those problems,” he said.

But by far the most wrenching conflict that he tackled on Wednesday involved Russia. Mr. Obama and Mr. Medvedev met for about 10 minutes with only their interpreters present, and spent 60 minutes in discussions with a larger delegation that included Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and the national security adviser, James L. Jones.

First meetings between American and Russian leaders are fraught with historical significance. Premier Nikita S. Khrushchev famously pummeled President John F. Kennedy in 1961 during a two-day grilling in Vienna at a meeting Mr. Kennedy characterized as the “roughest thing in my life”; shortly after that meeting, Mr. Khrushchev began building the Berlin Wall.
FRAUGHT:充满
PUMMEL: v.(用拳)接连地打，打击
GRILL: n.烤架；烧烤餐馆

President George W. Bush and President Vladimir V. Putin established a personal rapport in Slovenia in 2001 that was badly eroded later by a string of contentious issues, like America’s plans to locate a missile defense system in Eastern Europe against Russian wishes.
RAPPORT: ~ (with sb/between A and B) sympathetic and harmonious relationship 融洽和谐的关系
CONTENTIOUS: 好争吵的, 争论的, 有异议的

Mr. Obama walked into the meeting with Mr. Medvedev on Wednesday, his aides said, determined not to repeat past mistakes. After initial pleasantries — the two men discussed their shared interest in law — Mr. Obama, the aides recounted, said, “All right, let’s get down to business,” and began discussions that included Afghanistan, Iran, missile defense and human rights.
AIDE:助手
RECOUNT：描述
Mr. Obama brought up Lev A. Ponomaryov, a Russian human rights leader and frequent Kremlin critic, who was beaten late Tuesday outside his Moscow home. The president did not, however, mention the jailed former tycoon Mikhail B. Khodorkovsky, who is being tried in Russia on charges of tax evasion and other offenses that his supporters claim are trumped up.

A joint statement released after the meeting promised a “fresh start in relations between our two countries,” and White House officials said Mr. Obama would visit Moscow in July.

“We, the leaders of Russia and the United States, are ready to move beyond cold war mentalities,” the two men said in the statement. “In just a few months we have worked hard to establish a new tone in our relations. Now it is time to get down to business and translate our warm words into actual achievements of benefit to Russia, the United States and all those around the world interested in peace and prosperity.”
MENTALITIES：n.心态，思想方法
But clear problems between the nations remained visible, even when viewed through the prism of the joint statement, which sought to emphasize common ground. On European missile defense, for instance, the statement acknowledged “that differences remain” but said that Mr. Obama and Mr. Medvedev looked into possibilities for cooperation, “taking into account joint assessments of missile challenges and threats.”
PRISM：棱镜；(结晶)柱
ASSESSMENT：估计；评估

That appeared to be a noncommittal way of saying that Russia still had not lifted its intense objections to American plans to locate a missile defense system in Eastern Europe, and that the Obama administration was not willing to give up those plans unless it received something from Russia in return, foreign policy experts said.
NONCOMMITTAL：a.态度暧昧的，不表示意见的(不承担义务的)
The United States could be looking for more cooperation on international efforts to halt what the West believes are Iran’s efforts to acquire a nuclear weapon despite Tehran’s obligations under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. “While we recognize that under the N.P.T. Iran has the right to a civilian nuclear program, Iran needs to restore confidence in its exclusively peaceful nature,” the statement said, reflecting the Russian argument that Iran’s nuclear ambitions may have been overstated.
OVERSTATE：夸大
Still, in a concession to the United States, the statement called on Iran to stop its enrichment of uranium and to allow more international weapons inspections of its nuclear facilities.

GenevUID：2543794

Apr 2

One risk is that the group, if it seeks consensus, will produce an anodyne statement that adds little or nothing to the existing efforts to respond to the global slump. A greater risk is that the summit is so badly divided, and the outcome is so feeble, that dashed expectations actually worsen confidence.

And with the Tokyo stockmarket scraping 26-year-lows in mid-March before soaring 20% in the past fortnight, the reputation of equities as an investment is shoddy at best. Yet some Japanese investors are throwing caution to the wind and beginning to buy.

But Japanese shares yield 2.7% whereas short rates are virtually zero, and the potential is huge when Mrs Watanabe eventually does wade in. She and her kind sit on financial assets of around $15 trillion, half in cash and bank deposits. As the population ages and declines, earning income from those savings is essential.

Yet when a board member of a local broker in December ventured into the stockmarket for the first time, it elicited only cynicism from seasoned hands. “Sure, push up the share price so institutional investors can sell,” sniped one international banker. Just another kabuya.

The late Deng Xiaoping gave warning, in the wake of the collapse of European communism, that China should keep a low profile in world affairs and bide its time.

Now, with the West in economic disarray, China’s leaders see an opportunity if not to supplant American power, at least to start wielding a bit more of the clout that they feel they deserve given recent, rapid economic growth and the country’s importance to a global recovery.

China was still viewed as a pariah by many in the West because of its bloody crackdown.


Apr 3
A general willingness to give Mr Obama the benefit of the doubt was palpable even among the exuberant anti-capitalist demonstrators jamming the streets of London’s financial district—a minority of whom turned violent and clashed with police as they attacked a branch of the Royal Bank of Scotland. “He’s got good morals,” conceded a graffiti artist called Monkey, while helping his friend scale a traffic light and drape a banner: it depicted a grim reaper clutching fistfuls of banknotes.
These upbeat noises from a hitherto grumpy Russian official marked a change of tone.

These days, America’s ties with China probably matter more to the world than the remnants of superpower diplomacy. And on that front, too, the chemistry was good. With China’s President Hu Jintao, Mr Obama agreed that his treasury secretary, Timothy Geithner, would start a Sino-American “strategic and economic dialogue” beginning in Washington, DC, this summer. The Americans said Mr Hu assured them of his commitment to boosting demand as well as improving economic management.

Visiting Downing Street earlier in the day, Mr Obama was at once emollient, self-critical and articulate, in a way that put an initially bashful Gordon Brown at his ease. “I came here to put forward ideas but I also came here to listen and not to lecture,” the president said, setting the tone—one that subtly combined humility with firmness about the responsibilities of others—for his meeting with the leaders of 19 developed and emerging economies.

But he rejected the idea of American decline, saying that was an old theory, which had been repeatedly belied by the existence of “a vibrancy to our economic model, a durability to our political model, and a set of ideals that has sustained us through difficult times.”

But Mr Obama was anxious not to let the Franco-German duo spoil the party. Instead he stressed the “enormous consensus” that existed on the need to reinvigorate the sagging world economy.

Elsewhere on the sidelines, more conventional voices were stressing that there could be limits to Mr Obama’s ability to dissolve global problems at a stroke. There are some tricks that even Obama magic cannot pull off.

whinnyUID：189834

我篇章理解能力太差了。

G-force
Apr 2nd 2009
From Economist.com

The G20 outcome is better than nothing, but can the IMF save the world?

WHEN an infamous summit of world powers in London ended in 1933, such was the mood of protectionist acrimony that many argued it would have been better if the meeting had not been held at all. At times in the run up to the G20 gathering of world leaders in London on Thursday April 2nd it looked as if history might be repeated. But the leaders have shown some grit, and some ingenuity in finding money when little is about. Many holes can be picked in their pledges to reflate the world economy and re-regulate global finance. But, at the very least, it was better that they met than not.
ACRIMONY: bitterness of manner or words （态度或言语的）尖刻
GRIT: quality of courage and endurance 勇气和毅力
INGENUITY: n.独创性，巧妙

The centerpiece of the leaders’ plan is, conveniently, the IMF, which they believe can add an extra $1 trillion in funding to the world economy without the risk of ballooning national budgets, or obstruction from national politicians. That financial conjuring trick gets the G20 out of a bind. Gordon Brown, the British prime minister, has made much of $5 trillion in public spending that governments around the world have promised to help shunt their economies out of recession in 2009-10. But big spenders such as America and Britain are up against their limits and fiscal hawks such as Germany are stubbornly convinced they have done enough.
BALLOON: v. 如气球般膨胀
OBSTRUCTION: action of obstructing; being obstructed 阻碍; 障碍; 妨碍
CONJURE: ask (a spirit) to appear (esp by using a magic ceremony) 祈求（鬼魂）显灵
BIND: tie or fasten, eg with rope 捆绑或系紧（如用绳）
SHUNT: move (a railway locomotive, wagons, etc) from one track to another 使（火车头﹑
货车等）转轨﹑
调轨
That leaves the IMF as pump-primer of last resort, although not all of the funding promises made on Thursday were new. Japan and the European Union had already agreed to put $100 billion each into the IMF’s kitty. Rich countries such as America will provide a $500 billion credit line, known as New Arrangements to Borrow. This was trailed several weeks ago. Significantly, the IMF will print $250 billion of its own currency, known as special drawing rights, allocating sums to its members according to their quotas. It is not clear whether this can be redirected from rich countries to poor ones.
SDR:特别提款权哦，我今天在凤凰网上看到的。
This flood of extra resources, plus an enhanced oversight role the G20 has given to the fund, will be a huge turnaround for an institution whose relevance had slumped in the boom years. Now the new money must be directed to developing countries, especially in eastern Europe. Many such countries have been loth to tap the fund because of the stigma involved. A pledge by the G20 to reform the fund’s governance soon may convince them that the leopard has changed its spots. This week Mexico secured a $47 billion credit line with the fund, with no strings attached, which may set a trend. Eswar Prasad of the Brookings Institution believes the commitment to reform is credible. His evidence is that China has agreed to chip in $40 billion, prior to any changes to its voting power in the IMF (it has the same heft as Belgium). Others, however, remain skeptical. “This is still supply chasing demand,” says Arvind Subramanian of the Centre for Global Development.
LOTH/LOATH:
unwilling; reluctant 不愿意; 不情愿
HEFT: n. 重量,分量,重要性

The importance of offering new sources of funds to the developing world should not be underestimated, however. By some estimates poor countries have $1.4 trillion of debts to roll over this year alone and Western creditors are hoarding their cash. These countries have far less fiscal room for manoeuvre than rich economies. They are also areas of the world where growth could rebound quite quickly, because households are not weighed down by the crushing debts typical in America and Europe. In a further fillip to many of them, the G20 agreed to ensure $250 billion in trade finance to help reboot global trade—though it was not clear how much of this was new money.
HOARD:
carefully collected and guarded store of money, food or other treasured objects （钱财﹑
食物或其他珍贵物品的）储藏, 积存
FILLIP:
stimulus or incentive; encouragement刺激; 激励; 鼓励
As for efforts to drag the developed world out of the mire, the G20 went perhaps further than had been expected, though undoubtedly not far enough. It emphasised the problem of scrubbing toxic assets off banks’ balance-sheets, but gave little guidance on how banks should be forced to mark down their assets to saleable prices. (Undermining that effort, on Thursday American accounting standard-setters watered down a mark-to-market provision that would have forced banks to value their assets at market prices. The short-sighted reprieve led to a huge rally in the shares of stricken banks such as Citigroup.)
MIRE:泥潭
SCRUB:
~ sth (down/out) clean sth thoroughly by rubbing hard, esp with a brush and soap and water 彻底擦洗某物
MARK-T0-MARKET: 调至市价，市值
WATER DOWN:冲淡
REPRIEVE:
It also, in a nod to strongly held German and French sentiments, called for regulation of hedge funds and other parts of the shadow banking system, a crack down on tax havens and banking secrecy, and more oversight of credit-rating agencies. There was little to suggest that one of the main causes of the crisis, incentives for banks to grow too big to fail, was being tackled.

Financial markets rallied after the G20 news, though this was as much because of sprigs of good economic news emerging as the harmony that was displayed. This was despite disappointment that the European Central Bank had cut its main interest rate on Thursday, by just a quarter of a percentage point, to 1.25%. American unemployment figures on Friday, which could be shocking, may puncture some of that optimism, and should temper any temptation among G20 leaders to claim success. Their efforts to reflate the world economy may have avoided a 1930s-style depression so far. But rising joblessness and years of pain may lie ahead as banks, businesses and households in the West continue to struggle to pay down their debts.
SPRIG:
small twig (of a plant or bush) with leaves, etc （有叶等的）小枝
ANODYNE: (drug) that can relieve pain 止痛的（药）
SCRAPE: make (a surface, etc) clean, level or smooth by drawing a sharp tool or sth rough across it 擦净, 削平, 磨光（某物）:
SHODDY:
badly made 劣质的
ELICIT: draw (facts, a response, etc) from sb, sometimes with difficulty 从某人处诱出, 探出
SNIPE:狙击
BIDE: bide one's time wait for a good opportunity 等待有利时机.
CLOUT: power or influence 权力; 影响力
PARIAH: social outcast 社会的遗弃者; 贱民: be treated as a pariah 被待作贱民.
(in India) person of no caste or of very low caste （印度的）贱民, 帕利亚
PALPABLE: that can be felt or touched 可触知的; 摸得出的
EXUBERANT: (esp of people and their behaviour) overflowing with happiness and excitement; very lively and cheerful （尤指人和行为）兴高采烈的, 活跃的, 愉快的
SCALE:攀登climb up (a wall, cliff, etc)
DRAPE: hang (cloth, curtains, a cloak, etc) loosely on sth 将（衣物﹑
帘﹑
幕﹑
斗篷等）悬挂, 披
UPBEAT: unaccented beat, esp. at the end of a bar, shown by the conductor's baton moving upwards 上拍; 弱拍
HITHERTO: until now
GRUMPY: bad-tempered; surly 脾气坏的; 脾气暴躁的
REMNANT: (often pl 常作复数) (a) small remaining quantity or part or number of things or people （事物或人）剩余的小部分, 余下的数量
EMOLLIENT: (substance) that soothes and softens the skin 润肤的; 润肤剂
ARTICULATE: (of a person) able to express one's ideas clearly in words （指人）能用词语把意思表达清楚的:
BASHFUL: shy and self-conscious 害羞的
BELIE: give a wrong or an untrue idea of (sth) 使人对於（某事物）产生错误的或不符合实际的想法
VIBRANCY: 生气勃勃，活泼
REINVIGORATE:使再振作。
SAG: sink or curve down in the middle under weight or pressure （因负重或受压）向下凹或中间下陷:

dutingdaisyUID：2511771

恩，看Economist对GRE写作练习还是有很大帮助的，尤其感觉写起相关经济话题就好像如鱼得水，那天没有练习写作都感觉浑身不太舒服了，呵呵..

whinnyUID：189834

The Trial, round two
Apr 2nd 2009
From The Economist print edition
Apr 2nd 2009
From The Economist print edition

The second trial of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, like the first, will help determine Russia’s future言重了

IT HAS been a big week for Russia. That is not because of the first summit meeting between the Russian president, Dmitry Medvedev, and America’s Barack Obama in London. More significant was the opening on March 31st of the second trial of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, former boss of the Yukos oil company and once Russia’s richest man.

To understand why Mr. Khodorkovsky matters, one must go back to 2000 and the presidency of Mr Medvedev’s predecessor, Vladimir Putin. Many in the West hoped vainly that Mr Putin might turn out to be a liberal. Yet the turning-point of the Putin presidency was the attack on Yukos that began in the summer of 2003. This followed a clash between the two men over corruption, and it later led to the arrest and imprisonment of Mr Khodorkovsky. These events demonstrated beyond doubt that, under Mr Putin, opposition was not acceptable, the rule of law meant the law of the ruler and the Kremlin would keep a firm grip on Russia’s energy resources.
VAIN:
having too high an opinion of one's looks, abilities, etc; conceited （对自己的才﹑
貌等）自视过高的; 自负的
CLASH: ~ (sth and sth) (together) (cause things to) strike together with a loud, harsh noise （使）发出巨大刺耳的撞击声: Their swords clashed. 他们的剑互相撞击, 铿锵有声

By a strange twist, the Khodorkovsky case may now become a similar turning-point for Mr Putin’s protégé-turned-successor. Mr Medvedev has been in the job for almost a year. As before, some in the West hoped he might emerge as a liberal. Despite his apparent dependence on Mr Putin, now his prime minister, he insists that he is fully in charge. He has no KGB background and, within the Kremlin, has steered largely clear of the Yukos affair. Early in his presidency, moreover, he waxed lyrical about the need for Russia to strengthen the rule of law and to get away from what he called “legal nihilism”.
WAX:
wax and `wane increase and then decrease in strength or importance （力量或重要性）兴衰, 盛衰

The second Khodorkovsky trial will be the biggest test of Mr Medvedev’s promises. Mr Khodorkovsky’s route to riches, like that of many Russian oligarchs, was unsavoury. Yet putting him in the dock again conflicts with the “double jeopardy” principle that nobody should be tried twice for the same crime. That makes it more obvious that, as so often in Moscow’s past, this is a political show trial. Even so, its outcome may be uncertain—and it may not turn out to be helpful either to the Kremlin or to Mr Medvedev himself (see article).
UNSAVOURY:
unpleasant to the taste or smell; disgusting 味道不好的; 气味难闻的; 令人厌恶的

That is partly because the background to Mr Medvedev’s presidency has changed sharply in the past year. His meeting with Mr Obama was all smiles, with new promises to press the “reset button” on bilateral relations and restart talks on nuclear disarmament—and little said about Russia’s invasion of Georgia in August or America’s plans for missile defences in Poland and the Czech Republic. Yet the biggest problem for Mr Medvedev lies not in foreign policy but in the economy.

Red economic blues
Under Mr Putin’s presidency the bargain between the Kremlin and the Russian people was simple: you accept an autocratic regime, we will deliver rising living standards. Increasing oil prices and cheap credit produced annual GDP growth that averaged over 6% between 2000 and 2008. This year, however, lower oil prices plus the world recession could lead to a fall in Russian GDP of 6%. Unemployment is rising; inflation remains stubbornly high, at around 12%. This toxic cocktail is fast eroding Russians’ confidence. And that may explain why opinion polls reveal more public sympathy for Mr Khodorkovsky in his second trial than in his first.

With little sign of a revival in oil prices, the outlook for Russia remains bleak. That makes the Khodorkovsky case and Russia’s lack of a proper judicial system even more worrying. In the good times foreign investors and rich Russians alike were happy to overlook such things, just as they could ignore Russia’s non-membership of the World Trade Organisation, in the pursuit of profits. But capital will be scarcer than it was for years to come. So Russia must do more to show that it is an attractive destination for investors. That means, above all, creating a safer and more predictable legal climate.

In Kafka’s “The Trial”, Josef K is executed without ever finding out what his crime was. At times the trials of Mikhail K have been almost Kafkaesque. For the sake of Mr Medvedev’s presidency, and Russia’s future, this one should be halted long before reaching any similarly grotesque conclusion.
-ESQUE:
后缀
(used with ns to form adjs 与名词结合构成形容词) in the style or manner of ...的风格;...的方式:

whinnyUID：189834

William Shakespeare

Soul of the age
Apr 2nd 2009
From The Economist print edition

You can learn a lot about Shakespeare by studying the world he inhabited


IN HIS 1997 book, “The Genius of Shakespeare”, Jonathan Bate wrote about the man whom Ben Jonson, a rival playwright, poet and actor, described as “not of the age, but for all time”. In his new book, which is being published in America this month (it came out in Britain in October), Mr Bate explores a different Shakespeare, one Jonson described as “Soul of the Age!” the man who stood for and expressed the essence of his generation.

The effect, curiously, is not to distance the man, but to sharpen him. Approaching him locally, with connections to specific places and people, with certain books on his desk, and an eye out for particular political and diplomatic pitfalls—all this brings Shakespeare into focus. Not that any biographer has much hard fact to work on. As Mr Bate says, Shakespeare is elusive in every way: in his politics, religion, sexuality and in everything else that matters. The trick, it seems, is to pay very close attention to what evidence there is, not to take anything for granted and, well, to know a great deal about his world.
DISTANCE: ~ sb (from sb/sth) make sb less friendly or warm towards sb/sth 使某人与某人[某事物]保持距离﹑
关系疏远或冷淡
SEXUALITY:
Take Gloucestershire, for example, or even Warwickshire. It turns out that Shakespeare was the only dramatist of the period to stage scenes in these counties. (The Justice Shallow bits, with their intensely local country references in the second part of “Henry IV” come especially to mind.) At first glance this is nice to know, but no more than a dab of colour on the hills-and-dales Shakespeare who sits alongside the court-and-tavern one. What we don’t think of in this connection is maps—or rather Christopher Saxton’s map of England, published in 1579, and Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger’s portrait of Queen Elizabeth I standing on this map, her foot somewhere in Oxfordshire.
DALE:山丘
TAVERN:旅馆

The Saxton maps (there were separate county maps too) were the first to show England to itself in any detail: roads, towns, rivers, every crook and corner. They were part of the great Elizabethan project for an English Protestant national identity. They demonstrated the extent of the monarch’s reach. But as Mr Bate points out, this cut both ways. For they also gave people a sense of belonging to the land itself as much as to the crown. Shakespeare’s career, he argues, was more evenly split between London and Warwickshire, town and country, than is generally supposed. This duality influenced the whole structure of his thought, feeding in to the idea of a deep England, an England that wasn’t London. It is a long story, with many branches, and Mr Bate teases it out with the mixture of precise, wide-ranging historical, biographical and literary scholarship that distinguishes the book as a whole.

Mr Bate arranges his material around the seven ages of man, as in the melancholy Jacques’s “All the world’s a stage” speech from “As You Like It”. Even so, this is not straight chronological Shakespeare. It almost doesn’t matter in what order you read the book. The fascinating account of Shakespeare’s Latin training, and how it shaped his use of language, should be read early. Mr Bate’s later discussions, particularly of “The Tempest”, show how intricately he counterpointed the classical and Christian traditions. But the section on the Essex rebellion and the role of Shakespeare’s potentially subversive “Richard II” (a play about a monarch deposed and assassinated) can be read, thrillingly, on its own. Mr Bate dusts off the much-told story, and brings his man much closer to real danger. Luckily for us, it was Sir John Hayward, author of a Shakespeare-influenced history of Richard II, who was thrown in the Tower and interrogated when treason was the cry.
TEMPEST: violent storm 暴风雨; 风暴.
COUNTERPOINT: melody added as an accompaniment to another 对位旋律: (fig 比喻)
SUBVERSIVE: adj ~ (of sth) trying or likely to weaken or destroy a political system, an accepted belief, etc 为削弱或破坏某政治制度﹑
公认的信仰等的; 颠覆性的

So what was Shakespeare like? Canny, sceptical, sympathetic: might Enobarbus, the humorously detached and yet emotionally entangled friend of Cleopatra’s Antony come closest to him, Mr. Bate wonders? A constant theme is Shakespeare’s resistance to definition. He offered “questions and debates, not propaganda and positions”. Just as he has been appropriated, so he appropriated ideas from everyone else. On balance, Mr Bate suggests, the humane realism of Epicurus, an ancient Greek philosopher, whose pliableness and variety of mind Shakespeare would have encountered indirectly through the essays of Montaigne, is a good place to start.
CANNY: shrewd and careful, esp in business matters 精明仔细的
DETACHED:拆卸
APPROPRIATE: take (sth) for one's own use, esp without permission or illegally 拿（某事物）为己所用
PLIABLE: easily bent, shaped or twisted; flexible 易弯的; 可塑的; 可扭曲的; 柔韧的

xiao243410UID：2550990

感谢分享！













韩国饰品 韩国服饰 物流软件 物流咨询

潇湘梦影UID：2625619

每期都看...不过没有LZ这么认真。。呵呵
我下的是audio edition
我是用来练听力的，偶尔也看看文章

whinnyUID：189834

我也刚下载下来，晚上下班回家听一听。

fujitsuUID：2514768

:loveliness:

whinnyUID：189834

Dorothy Wordsworth

Woman on the edge
Apr 8th 2009
From The Economist print edition

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH’S sister, Dorothy, is usually thought of as sentimental and stodgy, a lover of daffodils and the healthy outdoors but ultimately rather dull. This subtle and intriguing new study by Frances Wilson, which came out in Britain a year ago and is just being published in America, is changing that view. Not only does it establish Dorothy as a fascinating figure in her own right, it also pulls off the hardest trick of literary biography: it brings the reader into intimate proximity with the subject yet reminds us that there are aspects of any past life which will remain forever mysterious.
STODGY：a.索然无味的
SUBTLE：not easy to detect or describe; fine; delicate 难以察觉或描述的; 细微的; 精细的
INTRIGUING：a.引起极大兴趣的

The book opens dramatically on the day of Wordsworth’s marriage to Mary Hutchinson in 1802. Dorothy has worn the couple’s wedding ring all night. When her brother enters her room in the morning, she hands it to him, only to have him briefly replace it on her finger with a blessing before leaving for the church. Dorothy is too distraught to attend the ceremony herself. As Ms Wilson puts it, William’s wedding was Dorothy’s funeral.
DISTRAUGHT：very troubled in mind with grief or worry 心烦意乱的; 忧心如焚的.

How to interpret the intense bond between Dorothy and her poet brother, which was played out in the suffocatingly tiny rooms of their home, Dove Cottage, and against the surrounding landscape of the Lake District, which inspired not only his poems but her enigmatic, evocative journals? As Ms Wilson points out, the fact that they were separated in childhood and came together again as young adults provided the psychological preconditions for the rapturous sense of mutual identification which they experienced.
SUFFOCATE：have difficulty in breathing 呼吸困难; 窒息
ENIGMATIC：MYSTERIOUS
EVOCATIVE：~ (of sth) that evokes or is able to evoke memories, feelings, etc (of sth) 引起回忆的; 唤起感情的
PRECONDITION：
Whether their intimacy was sexual, as was Lord Byron’s with his half-sister Augusta, is not something that can ever be known, though it was scurrilously gossiped about even at the time. In her journal Dorothy says she “petted” her “darling” William “on the carpet”, sat with his head on her shoulder, and came into his room at night to help him sleep. Ms Wilson thinks it unlikely that their relationship was incestuous in the full and literal sense. She is more interested in the emotional texture (which was indeed erotic) of their exclusive brother-sister love, from which William escaped into marriage, breaking Dorothy’s heart.
SCURRILOUS：and insulting, esp in a crude or obscene way 辱骂的（尤指粗俗下流的
PET：pet v (-tt-)
1 [Tn] treat (esp an animal) with affection, esp by stroking it 宠爱（尤指动物）; （尤指）抚摸（动物）.
2 [I] (infml 口) (of a man and a woman) kiss and caress each other （指男女）亲吻和爱抚: heavy (ie passionate) petting 热烈亲吻和爱抚.
INCESTUOUS：乱伦
LITERAL：corresponding exactly to the original 完全按照原文的
TEXTURE：the delicate texture of her skin 她细嫩的皮肤

The intensity of the Wordsworths’ sibling connection has been noted before, but Ms Wilson places it suggestively within the context of its time. Brother-sister love is a common Romantic preoccupation. It comes up, for example, in Percy Bysshe Shelley’s work and in the love that binds Cathy and Heathcliff in Emily Brontë’s “Wuthering Heights”. Dorothy’s fascination with nature is also presented through a Romantic lens, which makes it far wilder and more bohemian than it might appear to a modern eye. Against this background she comes over as a dangerous, unstable, even transgress figure—a woman on the edge in many senses.
BOHEMIAN：person, esp an artist) having or displaying a very informal and unconventional way of life 生活方式不正规和不合习俗的（人, 尤指艺术家）.
TRANSGRESSIVE：go beyond (the limit of what is morally or legally acceptable) 超出

Ms Wilson is an enlightened literary critic and her close readings of Dorothy’s celebrated journals, with their minute observations of the natural world, are a joy to follow. Dorothy’s writing is not introspective, but Ms Wilson cleverly reveals it to be far more exposing of its author’s complex, sometimes tortured personality than it appears on the surface. What the journals do not say is often as significant as what they do, and Ms Wilson reads perceptively between the lines, speculating when necessary but doing so with a clearness of thought which makes her approach utterly convincing.
CELEBRATED：a.有名的，知名的
INTROSPECTIVE：a.反省的
UTTERLY：十足

whinnyUID：189834

文学界的八卦啊