1006G备考日记 by pluka——Pursuit of simplicity（谢幕）

plukaUID：2721764

01.16-17 COMMENT
NOTE

concur（同时发生，同意）

Dr Landau says it is worth giving diplomacy another shot.（值得再给一次机会）
the international standoff（抵消和局平衡） over Iran's nuclear programme.

foolhardy（愚勇的，有勇无谋的）

yielded no progress

using violence to quell protests.

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, in particular, has so insinuated（使迂回地潜入） itself into Iran's economic and political structures.

curtail（缩减） Iran's nuclear programme.
Tehran could be in a position to （能够，有做…的机会）begin constructing a nuclear weapon by as early as March of this year.

intransigence（不妥协态度，不让步，不调和）

upcoming（即将来临的）

know-how（专门知识，技术诀窍）
Third, we must weigh the risks of failing to stop Iran's nuclear programme.

nuclear deterrent（核威慑力量）, Iran will be freer to sponsor terrorism, wage proxy warfare, derail the Middle East process and violently repress its burgeoning democratic movement.
the least bad option available to us.（最不坏的选择）
nipping in the bud

This is the essence of a pre-emptive（抢先的） military strike, as opposed to action that could easily become the prelude to war.
it focuses on denying capabilities, rather than altering states' motivations.

Iraq was on the verge of achieving a military nuclear capability

Barack Obama has clarified that military action is not a realistic option, even though he continues to provide lip service（说得好听的话，空口的应酬话） to it by saying from time to time（有时） that all options are on the table（在桌面上，公开地）.

it could or would act without a green light（绿灯，放行，准许） from the United States.


COMMENT

The nuclear disarmament ranks the most persistent and tricky issue in the world. Iran riles the world, especially the United States, by taking a intransigent stance and continuing procession towords the nuclear weapon. Under the context of failed diplomacy, military action has been proposed as a possible option; controversies are triggered.

Advocates for bombing Iran listed several reasons. Firstly, options seems have been run out and the diplomacy resulted in fruitless negotiations controled by not the UN but Iran themselves. No progress has been yield insofar the current context, and the proposal of a new regime cannot guarantee a better prospect. Iran, in the meantime, is gaining the capability to build the nuclear weapon: the action is exigent. Secondly, as the last option, military strike will indeed yield some achievement. Not only can it destroy the known nuclear sites in Iran, it can also disclose the unknown locations, clear up Iran's nuclear threat with the assistant of subsequent surveillance. Given the incalculably catastrophe that may be provoked by Iran's nuclear program, a military action should be reserved as final option.

Opponents' contentions delved deeper on political aspect, pointing out that a bombing attack could lend Iran an excuse to accuse the US as unjust war starter. Also, the bombing itself may lead to ambiguous consequence due to the lack of preemptive advantage. Instead of clearing the nuclear threat, military actions could not fight the motives, leaving Iran the continuing ambition to revive its nuclear program. The opponent then explored the possible access by which a more fruitful negotiation could be conducted. The diplomacy, she insisted, would always be a preferable option.

As for my own opinion, I find the opponent's argument more convincing. For one thing, I do not think that the United Stats can afford the price of military action which may trigger another war--in fact, no country can. For another, as the opponent have asserted, long-term peace and quiet can not achieved through crude and oversimplified bombing.
错别字：surveillance

plukaUID：2721764

今日的单词,COMMENT,专业课完成,仰头,还有好多要做.......

plukaUID：2721764

结果还是没完成……阿狗看完之后让ISSUE给卡着了，我恨教育类！完全没头绪呀呀呀~~~！
01.16
肚子都饿了……忍住！

plukaUID：2721764

今天总算回复正轨（勉强），要坚持下去啊……
作文的最大问题果然是思路和不好的写作习惯：列提纲的时间超过写作文的时间，而写作文的时间里面有一半的时间是在回视兼踌躇。
目标：克服坏习惯，列出快提纲~
01.17

plukaUID：2721764

01.18 COMMENT
NOTE&EXCERPT
Education: Through the Wall of Ignorance

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. . . .
—The Bill of Rights (1791)
In many state-operated schools, religion is as unmentionable（不宜说出口的） as syphilis（梅毒） was in Victorian parlors（会客室）. Result: a generation of religious illiterates—who perhaps know how to read & write, but not how, why or what to believe.
too hot a potato（烫手山芋）
The committee proposed to teach about religion, but not to teach religion itself, in the schools. For a while the group had considered a proposal to find and teach a set of principles common to all faiths (e.g., some form of Golden Rule), but rejected this as "watered-down（打折扣的）" religion acceptable to nobody.
......
"The study of the religious classics . . . in the regular literature program [should be expanded]. . . . The Bible is second to none（首屈一指的） among the books that have influenced the thought and ideals of the Western world. [It deserves study] conducted with at least as much respect as is given to the great secular classics（世俗经典）, and devoid of arbitrary interpretations to the same extent. . . ."*
"To confine the teaching of religion to separate 'religious courses' tends toward . . . splitting off of religion from the rest of life. . . . [Religious education] is not something to be added on to the school curriculum, but rather something to be integrated with it"—in existing classes on history, sociology, psychology, economics, philosophy, literature, music, the fine arts.
Concluded the committee: "On all sides we see the disintegration of loyalties . . . the revival of ancient prejudices, the increase of frustrations, the eclipse of hope. . . . Religion at its best has always been an integrating force, a spiritual tonic for a soul racked（折磨） by fear and cringing（畏缩） in weakness. ... Its imperfections will not be lessened by an attitude of splendid isolation on the part of intellectuals, or of indifference on the part of those responsible for the education of youth."
* Several states prohibit Bible reading in school, others insist that only the Protestant（新教的） Bible be read. The committee would like to see each student study the version of his own faith.

COMMENT

It seems the religion has fallen prey of the wide-accepted materialism and the worship of scienific truth. As a student in a country which boasts little religious tradition, I seldom feel the difference between an adherent of God and an atheist: in fact, I see no pious adherent at all. 

This situation surely have something to do with the education. A seemingly self-evident explanation goes that religion and science are incompatible: they contrast and refute each other, fighting for the unique status in people's belief. And as science and technology have consistently beening proved their unparalleled capability in creating a world available to more convenience, their status rises dramatically. Anything that is considered harmful to the development of technology is considered deleterious to the development of society, and in the same way, human's living. "The unscientific" is now frequently labeled as lie or fault, an interpretation that sometimes mix the conception of unscience and pseudoscience. While the pseudoscience are rightly condemned, perhaps we can be more tolerant to those "unscience".

The religion falls into the category of unscience, of course. No pastor can show that God exists, no scientist can prove otherwise either. As for me, I prone to an agnostic stance: religion fails to convince me the deity, yet science in the meantime should not bother to protrude his nose into the business of belief. As being written in the constitution, citizens enjoy the religious freedom, and education should not undermine this freedome by prejudice in deciding its curriculum.

Though in support of the committee's proposal, I'm kinda skeptical about the pragmatic things. Are they able to transform a deep-rooted education tradition into a religious flexible one? That must be a tempest storm across the whole country. Whether they can stand up to it remains to be seen.

cinderella1016UID：2666652

Fall prey of should be ”fall prey to”;
wide-accepted should be “widely accepted”;
convince me the deity should be “convince sb of sth”;

plukaUID：2721764

谢谢cinderella!写完后直接贴上来，现在看到好多错处……
主谓一致错了几处，多个形容词的连接也是。
fall prey to那个是一直以来的模糊之处，嗯记住了~

plukaUID：2721764

呜~~~~~~~~~又要开始没网的日子了~
明晚到周四，闭关考试（俺的本意不是闭关哪奈何网络不通哪）~
今晚做BS列提纲去了，没能改也没能写，叹气。BS有些意思，奈何到后来累得要瘫倒= =|||
01.18

plukaUID：2721764

01.19 COMMENT
ARTICLE
In this long season of bailouts and federally administered stimuli, with seemingly every starving investment banker pleading to Congress that capitalism is just too hard, America’s artists had a golden opportunity to pull off the greatest piece of conceptual art since Marcel Duchamp realized that urinal-factory craftsmen in Trenton, New Jersey, were turning out far more graceful sculpture than he ever could. Instead, they sold themselves out at the ridiculously low price of $50 million. Andy Warhol must be spinning in his grave.


That comparatively paltry sum was all the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) was able to wangle（骗取） from the massive $787 billion stimulus package President Obama signed into law in February. Since there are roughly 2 million dancers, sculptors, painters, and other professional aesthetes in the U.S. (according to the 2008 NEA report Artists in the Workplace), that means they are in line for an extra $25 each. Or about enough to buy a new black beret.

Wouldn’t it have been more provocative, inspiring, and educational if they’d simply said, “No, thanks”? If, say, they’d commissioned Karen Finley to storm the Capitol, her naked body decorated with a portrait of Milton Friedman fashioned from smeared Godiva chocolate? “We don’t want your money!” she could have exclaimed. “Not the $50 million mandated by the stimulus act, nor the $145 million in annual funding the NEA was already scheduled to get this year! Keep your soft-core socialism for Citigroup and the manufacturers of wooden arrows! We’re artists! Fiercely autonomous! Proudly independent! Unlike our cowardly, un-American counterparts in the world of big business, we’re committed to free enterprise and self-determination!”

Instead, arts advocates responded like every other underachieving（成绩不佳的，发挥不良的） opportunist peddling（叫卖、散播） its troubled assets to federal sugar daddies（讽刺的描绘啊）: They argued that our chamber music societies and tap dancing foundations are too economically significant to fail（too...to结构，不要忘记了~）. The arts’ “role in generating billions of dollars in ancillary economic activity for stores, restaurants and the travel business has been proven in bucketloads of surveys and analyses,” exclaimed Chicago Tribune theater critic Chris Jones. “Even the smallest [arts] organization can record the fact that the parking lot down the street and the dry cleaner around the corner and the restaurant nearby all do better when the organization is functioning,” Kate D. Levin, New York City’s cultural affairs commissioner, told The New York Times. An NEA press release announced, “Nonprofit arts organizations and their audiences generate $166.2 billion in economic activity every year, support 5.7 million jobs, and return nearly $30 billion in government revenue every year,” with “every $1 billion in spending by nonprofit arts and culture organizations and their audiences result[ing] in almost 70,000 full time jobs.”（艺术拉动经济和就业，这个说法不常见呢）

Do the math on that one and the results are undeniably impressive: If we applied all $787 billion of Bailout: The Sequel（结局） to the arts, we’d create approximately 55 million new jobs! But are we really willing to watch several million performances of Viva Zarzuela by the Anchorage Opera Company as the price for retaining our status as the world’s greatest economic power? If the virtue of the arts is their capacity to inspire economic activity, it’s not clear why they deserve special consideration over, say, restaurants or fashion designers. Isn’t it possible, after all, that we’re going to the symphony mostly as an excuse to wear that new Oscar de la Renta silk faille kimono gown, or as an afterword to a meal at Jardiniere? Even if we don’t axe（削减经费） the NEA in favor of the National Endowment for Snooty Designer Labels and Fancy San Francisco Restaurants, shouldn’t we at least be urging it to expand its support of the kinds of live theater—comedy clubs, strip clubs, WWE wrestling—that are likely to draw bigger, more economically exploitable crowds than a bilingual puppetry adaptation of Don Quixote?（反驳经济是评价艺术赞助的指标）

In the early 1960s, when our highest elected officials began evangelizing（传福音） for the creation of state-sponsored arts programs, there was little talk（这个词可以用在这里啊） of ancillary economic activity or job creation. At the dedication of a new library at Amherst College in 1963, President Kennedy said he looked forward to an America “which will steadily enlarge cultural opportunities for all our citizens.” At a groundbreaking ceremony for the Kennedy Center in 1964, President Johnson expressed his desire to “enlarge the access of all our people to artistic creation.” A year later, he approved the legislation that created the National Endowment for the Arts. Its first grant, for $100,000, went to the American Ballet Theater, a bequest which, according to the New York Herald Tribune, saved that institution from extinction.（艺术赞助的好处，例子）

Today, Presidents Kennedy and Johnson would no doubt be pleased to see how enlarged—swollen（肿胀的）, in fact（添一个形容，感觉立刻就变成反面和讽刺）—our access to artistic creation has become. We produce more novels, more slasher flicks, and more neo-classical lawn sculpture than any other civilization in the history of the world. According to the League of American Orchestras, there are 1,800 symphony, chamber, collegiate, and youth orchestras in the United States. Theater Facts, an annual overview of the not-for-profit theater world, reports that the 1,910 nonprofit theaters it received data from in 2007 gave 197,000 performances of 17,000 productions that year. The American Ballet Theater is still going strong, and tickets can be had for as little as $26 a piece if you’re willing to go to Wednesday matinees（白天举行的音乐会）, sit in the cheap seats, and commit to at least three performances. Also, there’s this thing called the Internet.（描述美国艺术业的发达）

In such a competitive, oversupplied environment, is a lack of funding really the primary reason that not every Midwestern dance troupe is thriving?（过渡得好！观点转换得很自然） Will throwing money at highbrow（不切实际的自以为是的） entities suddenly make people less interested in American Idol and YouTube and more interested in Alvin Ailey? At this point, it might be more beneficial for the kinds of arts the NEA has traditionally funded to create a federal agency that spends $150 million a year snipping（剪断） cable hook-ups, sabotaging iPods, and paying modestly（谨慎地，适当地） talented environmental sculptors not to create. That way, we might actually have some spare attention to give new orchestral works and accordion festivals.（完全是讽刺、归谬的手法，但很有说服力！）

In the early 1990s, when the NEA was helping underwrite（承诺支付） artists who baptized Jesus Christ in urine or gave live tours of their cervixes, its value to our culture was clear: For less than a dollar a year per taxpayer, the organization served as a vivid symbol of our commitment to free expression. In other countries, the government might behead（砍头） you for blaspheming sacred figures; in America, it was paying you to do so! Granted, the NEA did a far better job offending conservative sensibilities than liberal ones, but anyone with a taste for unfettered（无拘无束的） discourse could appreciate it on an abstract level at least. The arts bureaucracy was itself a work of conceptual art.（重提NEA的好处：让艺术家畅所欲言）

Today the agency is careful to fund nothing more controversial than bilingual puppetry epics（木偶戏）. And given the glut of cultural opportunities that now bedevil（虐待，使苦恼）us, its status as a nurturer of the arts is less pronounced than its status as an agent of state-sponsored moral engineering. Now, it exists largely to reinforce the notion that musicals are somehow more inherently suited to nourishing the roots of our culture than sitcom pilots. That ballet is a greater part of our national heritage than burlesque. That mediocre opera singers deserve more support than our best gangsta rappers.（指出NEA现状：僵化的教化）

If you’d be disturbed by an institution called the National Endowment for Faith that not only funded explicit religious expression but also favored a few specific creeds and religions while ignoring all others, you should be equally wary of the NEA. It’s a superfluous（冗余的） organization with a message that belies（掩饰） America’s foundational themes of pluralism（多元化社会形态） and democracy. The wrangling（争论口角） over bailout scraps offered artists an opportunity to exit a bad alliance with an elegant, ironic flourish. Instead, they acted like investment bankers—really meek（谦恭的驯服的） investment bankers—and simply asked for more money. No wonder so few people go to performance art happenings these days.（讽刺艺术家们软塌塌地去要钱）
COMMENT

This article showed me a new perspective to the state-sponsered art programs: from the angle of economic. 

In my opinion, this essay articulated three point. Firstly, should the financial merit of art be the reason that artists receive bailout? Secondly, will the bailout help restoring the status of arts that are fading out of people's sight? Thirdly, what are the current NEA doing and do artists need them? Those contentions are so closely connected and logically organized that it can literally be a model template issue writing! 

Another thing learned from this essay is the use of irony and reduction to absurdity. To clarify the futile result of bailout on promoting arts, the author juxtaposed the popular devices such as iPods and American Idol with live symphony performances, exhibiting convincingly that more subsidy to orchestra band is unlikely to draw back people's attention from other diversions or free online shows. 

all together, I really got sth from this essay, humm, feel good.

错别字：contention（老是写出contension，不止一次了泪）

===================
请假：回家、回学校、考试。周五回归论坛~

ieyangj08UID：2743219

很认同。
一起加油：）
192# pluka

zhengchangdianUID：2563082

我来啦，最近想到了一个小组活动，等放假了，我再和你说说。要加油哈！！:lol

plukaUID：2721764

01.22 COMMENT
NOTE&EXCERPT
Conformity and individuality 

Follow the crowd and you will never be followed by a crowd

 "Absence makes the heart grow fonder" is true over the short term and "Out of sight, out of mind" is true over the long term.

1、The purpose of the example is to show that contradictions, inconsistencies, and paradoxes are perfectly acceptable. In fact, without them we could never understand the full measure of life. For life is complex. It can never be reduced to a simple statement. It cannot be described in black and white terms.（黑白分明地辨清） When we grasp this truth, it helps us to see things differently. We learn to question, probe, and search for the bigger picture. Even the greatest of minds will occasionally slip and fail to see the big picture because they mistakenly believe that contradictions are irreconcilable.（很好的观点段）

2、Take Euripides（欧里庇得斯，希腊悲剧诗人） (485? ~ 406 BC), for example, he said, "No man on earth is truly free. All are slaves of money or necessity. Public opinion or fear of prosecution forces each one, against his conscience, to conform." What Euripides was writing about is today's topic, which is individuality versus conformity. Is it true, as he says, that we are not free to be ourselves because we are constrained by the times and culture we live in? True, we have to work, but aren't we free to love our jobs? Yes, society insists that we behave in a particular manner, but aren't we free to choose to conform when it is in our best interest to do so?（观点：出于个人意志的服从）

3、The truth is individuality and conformity are merely different sides of the same coin. We cannot have one without the other. We cannot have conformity unless there are individuals to conform. And we cannot have individuality unless there is conformity to break free of. Although conformity can be interpreted as a loss of freedom, without it society would be reduced to chaos. Look at present-day Iraq. Citizens are pleading with the coalition forces to restore law and order. They are begging to be restrained by laws, for once they are, they will be FREE to wander in the streets without fear.（指出“自由”的混乱）

4、Are you fed up with（厌腻讨厌） the many laws and rules you have to put up with? At times, you have a right to be, for the laws may well need changing. However, many times our dissatisfaction with the demands of society is because we have forgotten the benefits of conformity. Whenever we join a group, we share in the benefits, advantages, and power. And conformity is the price we pay to gain admission to that group. How can I have one without the other?

5、Imagine how the lives of Jews and Palestinians will improve when they agree to live in peace, harmony, and cooperation. By conforming to mutual expectations, they can transform a living hell to an earthly paradise. Such is the power and freedom we can gain by conforming to the greater good. When we learn to do so because of our concern for the rights of others, we grow in spiritual awareness and help to make the world a better place.
6、For as Hermann Hesse (1877 ~ 1895) wrote, "Every man is more than just himself; he also represents the unique, the very special and always significant and remarkable point at which the world's phenomena intersect, only once in this way and never again."
7、A word of warning: we have been socialized to conform to the wishes of authority figures. Too often we act out of habit. Yes, we need to cooperate and conform whenever it is fitting, but we need to question as well. Failure to question unscrupulous business accounting practices led to many people in the U.S. losing their retirement plans. Failure to question the government led to the loss of 58,000 American lives and perhaps 1,750,000 Vietnamese in the Vietnam War. Regardless of the authority figure, we need to question it. A quote attributed by Robert Green Ingersoll to Ferdinand Magellan (1480 ~ 1521) is a example, which writes, "The church says the earth is flat; but I have seen its shadow on the moon, and I have more confidence even in a shadow than in the Church." [Yes, we need to conform, but not at the price of abandoning reason and common sense.


8、as Mignon Mclaughlin (b. 1915) said, "Every society honors its live conformists and its dead troublemakers." We owe all progress, discoveries, and breakthroughs to those few men and women who had the courage to be different. Their differences made all the difference to the world. 


9、Also part of our responsibility is to educate our children properly. When doing so, keep in mind the words of Friedrich Nietzsche (1844 ~ 1900): "The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem to those who think alike than those who think differently." 

COMMENT

The relation between individual and group is always multifold. This essay offered some good ideas, among which I find two are particularly impressive. 

The first one is that contradictions are acceptable. They happen because we deal with things using different metrics and from different perspectives. Therefore sth seemingly wrong may turn out to be perfectly right under certain circumstance. Both natural science and social reality have lent us many examples.

The second is that conformity is the price we pay for the group benefit, i.e., we have to obey the rule and get ourselves to be admitted into the society before enjoying the welfare the community provided and working our own wills, as a sign of individuality, within the community. 

Another quotation that I admire is that "Every society honors its live conformists and its dead troublemakers." Sounds ironical, and yes it is ironical, sadly. 
====================
回来啦~
……赶作业

plukaUID：2721764

01.21 COMMENT
This article introduced a new way to shap heavy metals. Interestingly, this new method, known as EMPs, used to be applied in warfare. This again proved the saying that there is no evil in the atom but in human's heart; we can take advantage of EMPs in industrial field, or get hurt in battle field. The article then explained the process of the EMPs method and offered one alternative, lasers. Err, well, I'm not good at making comments on scientific topics.

plukaUID：2721764

01.20 COMMENT
NOTE
High on his wish list was a method of gaining control over specific classes of neurons（倒装）
Over the past few years Crick’s vision for targeting neurons has begun to materialize thanks to a sophisticated combination of fiber optics and genetic engineering.
Such feats have inspired much public comment
dystopia（敌托邦，糟糕透顶的社会）
It has already furnished clues（提供线索） as to how neural miswiring underlies...
Although optogenetic control of human behavior may be years away, Deisseroth comments that the longer-range implications of the technology must be considered: “I’m not writing ethics papers, but I think about these issues every day, what it might mean to gain understanding and control over what is a desire, what is a need, what is hope.”

COMMENT
Apart from the technological things, what interested me is the science-fiction styled dystopia and Deiseroth's comment on the uncertain furture when some people gain the understanding and control over other's mind. This needs more rethinking than cloning, I think. For if a person clones a man, we can easily condemn him, yet if he operates some surgery using the neuro-technology mentioned above, perhaps it's hard to distinguish whether he's curing the patient's mental disease or implanting some control by stealth.
The ethics is always busy with handling scientific breakthroughs recently, especially with biology. It might be a tradition during the science history to have some distance between the morality and the cutting-edged discoveries, yet I'm just a little bit worry that the distance now may be stretching too far.
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comment补完~

plukaUID：2721764

要打算回复正轨啦（我是第几次说这话了来着？= =|||）
明天开始第三遍阿狗题库，要加快ISSUE提纲的速度了
01.22