1006G[REBORN FROM THE ASHES组]备考日记 by 正常点——任何的失败都有太多的必然

zhengchangdianUID: 2563082

Comment：

Well, I am not so interested in this passage because I have heard about its theme in my political class. The financial crisis paves way for further financial education and forces the business to operate in a new way.

Of course, it still creates an atmosphere of inspiration for me in some aspects. To begin with, the author contends that politics is many voices and lobby groups trying to influence the future of regulation. This latent rule makes an explanation for the establishment of the separation of the three powers and the American parliamentary system. As the author contends that the financial professors and economists are writing white papers on many aspects of regulation, the force from business schools has already involved in enacting decrees on behalf of their interest. So it is of much necessity for people in positions of power to exercise caution and restraint in the use of that power.

On the other hand, it is said that we would attend the previous stage contained more controls and supervision in terms of the history recurrent. According to the passage, leadership based on teamwork would be more effective than charisma in the following days. In my point of view, leadership originated from teamwork could promote the internal competition and reduce the risk of decision making, while the charismatic leadership could encourage persons in authority to be overconfident and arrogant. In this sense, financial crisis would sober people up instead of compelling them to fall off the precipice.

zhengchangdianUID: 2563082

补充：
It remainds me of the issue about whether the professors should teach out of their field. Well, the plight of students to identify programs by themselves is very similar to the circumstance businessman are in. The reason why I did not talk about it is that I have not reckon the corresponding predicament of businessman. Maybe they lack the ability to match the learned rules or financial models to match with the problems they met.

aladdin.ivyUID: 2596664

来看看正常点~！

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Planet hunting
Looking in the shadowsJan 5th 2010
From Economist.com
The search for a second Earth gets serious


IN THE 19th century astronomers（天文学家） spent a lot of time seeking shadows crossing the sun. They were searching for Vulcan, a putative（假定的） planet inside the orbit of Mercury（水星）, by looking for its transits. These are the moments when, viewed from Earth, the hypothetical planet would cross the solar disc. Sadly, there was no Vulcan to be found, but the method itself is sound, and it is the modus（方法） operandi（作案手法） of Kepler, an American spacecraft that has been trailing the Earth, in the same orbit, since March 2009.

Kepler is a telescope that looks simultaneously and continuously at more than 150,000 stars, recording the amount of light coming from them. It is seeking the tiny, periodic diminutions of illumination（光亮） caused by planetary transits and, on January 4th, the team running it announced that five such patterns had shown up in the first six weeks of the probe’s operation.

The past 15 years have shown that planets are commonplace. More than 400 have been located around stars other than the sun, by looking for the wobbles（摆动） in parent stars that orbiting planets cause. A decent（大方的） wobble, though, requires a massive planet, so the wobble method does not favour the discovery of Earth-sized objects. Kepler, however, can find such planets. The Earth itself, in transit（在运输过程中）, reduces the amount of light an observer would see from the sun by about 0.01%. That is well within Kepler’s range.

In fact, the planets found so far are significantly larger than Earth. Four are about the size of Jupiter and one about the size of Neptune. They also have much shorter orbits, ranging from 3.3 to 4.9 terrestrial days（地球日）. Neither of these facts is surprising. Even using the transit method, big planets are easier to spot than small ones, and to be sure that a flicker in brightness is caused by a planet rather than some property of the star itself, it must occur at regular and predictable intervals. Hundreds of flickers that might have been caused by planets with longer orbits have been seen, but have not yet have been confirmed as transits.

What this does mean, though, is that the planets in question are are much closer to their stars than Earth is, and thus much hotter (1200-1650ºC), as well as being larger. But they are not as hot as the most peculiar（奇特） discoveries Kepler has made. These are two planet-sized objects that are far hotter (at 12,000ºC) than their distances from their parent stars suggest they should be. That means they are giving out energy of their own, yet they are too small to be stars. One theory is that they are youngsters, giving off heat as they collapse inwards due to the pull of their own gravity, but nobody knows for sure.

None of these discoveries favours the underlying reason why planet-hunting is such a popular sport—the hope that, one day, a life-bearing（有生命的） planet will turn up. For that, more numbers will have to be crunched（紧缩）, and planetary atmospheres analysed for signs of oxygen. The hunt, however, is on in earnest（认真）. If Earth-sized planets are out there, they will soon be found.

zhengchangdianUID: 2563082

Comment：

The curiosity for unknown world has never been satisfied, especially in the sphere of alien creatures. No one is capable of neglecting the sense of honor when a newly discovered planet is called after his name, though, the so-called sport-planet hunting-should be regard as an instinct search for safety. Superficially the exploration for the unknown world is driven by the unquenchable curiosity, however, this act caters for the inner desire to eliminate the potential dangers and seek for the sense of security. It is upon this underlying rule that the mankind begin to know the world and invent techniques or tools to reassure themselves. In spite of the fanaticism from the various “hunters”, these persist probes always bring some novelty to shock and appease the crazy world.

今天写的很不错，特别是最后的paradox，吼吼:lol

zhengchangdianUID: 2563082

Political Crime
Chapter XI Conclusion

By Louis Proal

Politics have become discredited by the employment of culpable expedients and the adoption of immoral maxims; for their reputation to be retrieved they must be brought into accord with morality. After having resorted for so long to cunning and falsehood, to intrigue and violence, politics, were it only for the novelty of the thing, should try the effect of fair dealing, tolerance, and justice. Today, more than at any period, novelty is liked. And what greater novelty could there be than politics conducted on moral lines? It is possible that people will end by recognizing that in public as in private life honesty is the most effective and the most skilful policy. Not only should Machiavellism be loathed by honorable people, but it should be regarded as fatal to the true interests of nations. A great policy cannot be immoral. Craft and violence may score ephemeral successes, but they do not assure the greatness and prosperity of a country. The successes achieved by an immoral policy are not lasting; sooner or later nations, like individuals, politicians, just as private persons, are punished for the evil or rewarded for the good they do. Political crimes are punished more often than is supposed. Those who put their adversaries to death by poison or upon the scaffold often undergo a like fate; those who send others into exile are exiled in their turn.

There is more immorality than profoundness in Machiavellism. It was not a shifty and violent policy that was pursued by Saint Louis, L'Hopital, Henry IV., Sully, Turgot, Franklin, or Washington. Their example shows that it is possible to be a great King, a great Minister, a great citizen, and at the same time an honest man. On the other hand, mighty geniuses have been the ruin of the peoples they have governed, because they despised justice and pursued a Machiavellian policy. Napoleon I., who was solely guided by reasons of State, lost his senses in the end and embarked upon the war in Spain and the Russian campaign. Danton and Robespierre, who did not lack talent, brought the Republic to ruin through trying to save it by the Terror. Liberty is not to be imposed by the guillotine; fraternity is not established by the extermination of its adversaries; the reign of justice and equality is not founded by popular or judicial massacres.

The disciples of Machiavelli declare that politicians should resort to violence and even to crime, if to do so be necessary for the safety of the people, but what they call the safety of the people is often nothing more than the safety of their rule. The authors of the 18th Fructidor, who carried out that coup d’état（政变） under pretext of saving the Republic, violated the law solely with a view to escaping a personal danger; and far from saving the Republic, by demanding the intervention of a general they created a precedent for the 18th Brumaire. The public safety is an excuse for all violence and every iniquity. Moreover, when a political crime is really committed to assure the safety of the people, there is no proof that the crime is necessary, or that the people might not have been saved by other means. The safety of the people lies rather in respect for legality than in its violation. A people that does its duty can await the future with confidence; if it suffers for the moment in the cause of justice it is rare that the day of reparation does not dawn, for in the case of nations, as in that of individuals, it is virtues that elevate them and vices that debase them.

A Machiavellian policy is not a great policy; to practice it a great genius is not necessary. It is easier to govern by expedients than by principles. What is more, there has ceased to be any necessity for a policy of this sort in modern societies. It is comprehensible that Machiavelli's prince, that is to say, an absolute sovereign, should find it to his interest to sow division among his subjects in order to rule them; on the other hand, the maxim, "Promote division in order to reign," is out of place in a free Government that is supported by opinion and whose interest it is to unite and not to divide the community. Terror may be an instrument of government for a popular or military dictator, but it becomes inapplicable under a government of opinion. This being the case, instead of saying, as under the old system of politics, "Cunning, still cunning, and always cunning; audacity, again audacity, and always audacity," the watchword ought to be under the modern system of politics, "Straightforwardness, still straightforwardness, and always straightforwardness; justice, still justice, and always justice."

Diplomatic dissimulation becomes more difficult with the publication of parliamentary debates. This publicity, which has its inconveniences, offers the advantage that it is profitable to morality. It is impossible for a Minister to confess in a public discussion that he harbors unjust projects. Moreover, as public opinion becomes more enlightened, and acquires greater weight, its sound common sense takes the place of the finessing of the diplomatists. A crafty policy is not always the most skilful. Henry IV. did not have recourse to craft. A diplomatist who is in ¬the habit of resorting to falsehood ceases to inspire confidence and at once loses the greater part of his authority.

A policy based upon immorality is antiquated and unworthy of modern society; it pre-supposes contempt for humanity, and an antagonism that ought not to exist between those who govern and those who are governed. The policy of free peoples ought not to resemble the policy of absolute sovereigns; it is founded upon the respect of legality.

Whatever the skeptics may say, craft and violence are not necessities of politics. As society becomes more enlightened, politics may attain to greater perfection. Corruption is not an indispensable method of government: liberty can exist without license, it is allowable to hope for a state of things in which the administration will be impartial, the legislation equitable, the elections sincere, and in which industry and merit will be rewarded. The European Governments show better faith in respect to their financial engagements at the present day than in the past; they are conscious that it is to their interest not to tamper with their coinage, and not to go bankrupt, and for the reason that public confidence in their credit is their principal force. Why should they not arrive at understanding that they ought to have the same respect for liberty and human life as for the public debt?

The progress of public reasonableness is most of all to be counted upon to render politics more straightforward and more in accordance with equity. Politicians, assemblies, and sovereigns, knowing that they will be called upon to give an exact account of their conduct before the tribunal of public opinion, will become more circumspect in the employment of expedients of a kind to arouse public indignation. Politics should serve an educational purpose as well as maintain order and protect material interests. Men are governed by ideas and sentiments as well as by appeals to their interests and to force. A lofty sentiment does not spoil politics. The great advances made in the sphere of politics have been advances of a philosophical order and have been due to an application of Christian philosophy. Unprincipled politics are Pagan politics, and their result is not the progress of society. The true policy consists in an application of reason to the affairs of the State.

Skepticism has brought into existence at the present day a generation of politicians who set more store upon palpable realities than upon principles. A policy of expedients and of vulgar satisfactions is the outcome of skepticism. The change that has taken place in our political morals has deep and remote causes. A people that used to be chivalrous, that despised money, that was fired with ardor for noble causes, now for political liberty, now for military glory, does not become positively skeptical, indifferent to principles, and attached to material interests in a day. This change of character is the result of the numerous deceptions it has experienced, of the frequent revolutions it has undergone, but also of the weakening of spiritual beliefs.

"When a republic is corrupt," says Montesquieu, "none of the evils that crop up can be remedied, except by removing the corruption and reinstating principles; any other corrective is useless or a fresh evil." The suppression of the parliamentary regime would not be a remedy; the establishment of a dictatorship would be a fresh evil and a worse evil. The true remedy consists in a return to principles. Politics, like human life, need to be spiritualized unless they are to fall into the mire and to remain there. To change the persons composing the political world would be insufficient, unless a moral reform be affected at the same time. Clearly if the new politicians were as devoid of principles as the old, all that would have been done would have been to exchange fat for lean kine, who in turn would wish to wax fat. Between fatted skeptics and lean skeptics the difference is but slight, or if there be any difference it is rather in favor of the former. Obviously satiated skeptics are less dangerous than skeptics whose appetites are keen, because it may be hoped that, having looked after their own interests, they will at last look after those of the country. This, according to Saint Simon, was the cynical remark made by Maison when the direction of the finances was taken from him. "They are making a mistake," he exclaimed, "for I had looked after my own interests and was going to look after theirs."

A return to principles and moral beliefs and the substitution of ideas for appetites are, in consequence, the true remedies for that hideous malady political corruption. It is only in the power of great passions to drive petty passions from the field. As long as noble sentiments, love of country and of liberty and purifying beliefs, are not revived in a country the parliamentary atmosphere will remain vitiated.

Doubtless to exercise authority it is not sufficient to be above reproach; a clear intellect, tact, and experience are necessary. Talent, however, without morality is insufficient, and mere intelligence is no preservative against moral backslidings. Nobody would entrust his daughters or his fortune to the care of a clever but dissolute and extravagant man. Why then confide the country and the public fortune to the care of men of pleasure, who easily develop into men whose sole concern is money? When a money- and pleasure-loving man declares himself a friend of the people, who can believe in his sincerity? Affection is not proved by words, but by acts. The true sentiments of politicians are not to be judged by their professions of faith or their humanitarian speeches, but by their character and their habitual conduct. The probity expected of the head of a Government involves not only his own personal integrity, but the choice on his part of men of integrity for his Ministers. "If we would pass for men of integrity," says Cicero, "we should not only display probity ourselves, but exact it of those about us."

Statesmen would avoid many political errors if they were more respectful of justice; their political errors are often moral errors; their good sense and their skillfulness suffer in proportion as they swerve from the dictates of equity: they abandon themselves to passions that cloud their intelligence. Just ideas and wise resolutions are inspired by an upright conscience, whose qualities influence the intelligence. To be a man of good sense it is sufficient to be an honest man.

By again becoming moral, politics would be brought back into unison with common-sense, and would be cured of two serious diseases called the Socialist madness and the Anarchist madness that are the result of the sophisms by which we are inundated, and of the letting loose of evil passions. We lack reasonableness at the present day; our brains are disordered; our good sense, a quality that used to be particularly distinctive of the French, has been affected by innumerable philosophical, economical, and political sophisms that reach us from Germany, Italy, England, the East, and even from India. Good sense has ceased to guide our thoughts and actions since we have adopted German pessimism and socialism, English evolutionism, Italian skepticism, Russian Nihilism, and Asiatic Buddhism. Let us become Frenchmen again and Christians, let us return to the school of good sense and morality.

The malady from which contemporary society suffers is a moral disease rather than a political or economical disease. It is doubtless useful to improve institutions and to reform abuses but how much more necessary it is to reform morals and to give tone to men's minds by healthy ideas and moral beliefs. If society is to be saved from the corruption by which it is invaded, and from the revolutionary barbarism by which it is threatened, spiritualist teachings must be restored to the place they formerly occupied in men's minds and in politics; this is the only way to save them from the clutches of envy and hatred.

The sentiment of duty and of personal responsibility must be re-established in the public mind and in the education of the young. It is necessary to fight against the sophisms which lead to the absorption of the individual by the State, and to the conversion of every citizen into a part of a colossal machine that produces wealth and distributes it according to each man's needs. The true remedy for the crises we are traversing is a return to the old morality, which teaches that working-men in common with their employers are intended to do their duty, and to labor, and have their responsibilities. What other doctrine will teach the rich the spirit of sacrifice, and the voluntary renunciation of what is superfluous, and the poor the obligation of personal effort, the merit of patience, and respect for legality?

It is not by encouraging atheism and materialism that a Government effects an improvement in morals, that it stills passions and relieves wretchedness. Hostility to religion is contrary to sound politics. Merely from the utilitarian point of view the blindness and perversity are incomparable of those incredulous fanatics who would rob their fellows of the beliefs in which they find consolation. Who can deny that the religious sentiment conduces to morality? The more religious citizens there are in a State, the fewer are the restless spirits, the Socialists and the Anarchists. In a period of skepticism, materialism, positivism, evolutionism, and nihilism, who can dream of denying the immense services rendered by Christianity in inculcating the dignity of human nature and the obligatory character of duty, and in opposing the worship of an ideal to the worship of the golden calf? In a society in which there is talk of nothing else but of the struggle for life, of the rights conferred by might, of the elimination of the weak, of the disgrace of poverty, of the all-powerfulness of wealth, religion teaches self-sacrifice, respect, and love for the poor, and responsibility before God and before the conscience. At a period in which Socialism, grown more and more threatening, demands that the State should be omnipotent, Christianity again performs a useful work in standing out for the rights of the human being and the rights of the conscience, and in setting limits to the action of the State. If spiritual beliefs were not regaining ¬their hold over men's minds one would be forced to tremble for the future of society, for "there comes a day when truths that have been scorned announce themselves by thunder-claps."

Nations, too, in their mutual relations, have every interest not to separate politics from morality. A sound policy, no less than morality, dictates to them justice and charitableness, which are alone capable of preserving peace and with it the benefits it carries in its train. The policy that teaches nations that they should envy, hate, and injure each other, that their conduct should be solely guided by their interests, and that the difficulties that crop up between them should be settled by force alone, such a policy is criminal and mistaken. The statesmen who counsel this narrow and egoistical, this envious and malevolent policy, are shortsighted, they are merely alive to the interests of the moment that are a source of division, but they are blind to the interests which the peoples have in common, and above all to the disastrous consequences of antagonism and war; they do not keep in view the benefits of peace and the horrors of war.

How far preferable to an envious and ambitious policy that divides nations would be a just, friendly, and moderate policy that would bring them together! How far happier the nations would be if they would cease to lend themselves to a revengeful and high-handed policy! What a pitch of prosperity Europe would have reached if, realizing the project of Henry IV., it had applied to politics the rules of good sense and Christian morality. The aspect of the world would be changed if the nations, considering themselves members of the same family, would banish violence and craft from their councils. The policy of Christian peoples is still Pagan: it must become Christian if the world is to enjoy peace.

Carried away by his somewhat excessive enthusiasm for military glory, M. Thiers has remarked: “What purpose would the strength of nations serve if it were not expended in attempts to gain the mastery over each other?" It seems to me, however, that the strength of nations might be more usefully employed than in realizing dreams of conquest, which are so dearly paid for in money and blood, and which end in disasters and catastrophes. Every time that a nation has sought to conquer other nations, it has caused torrents of blood to flow without profit to itself. All those who have entertained dreams of conquest have met with failure. To establish their supremacy Charles V. and Napoleon I. caused millions of men to perish, and they were unable to attain their goal: the former died in a convent, the latter on the rocks of Saint Helena; Spain and France were ruined by their ambitious policy. To how many conquerors may not these words of the Bible be applied: "The hammer that shattered the nations of the universe has itself been broken in pieces."

A policy that aims at international equilibrium ¬is better than a policy of conquest. Empires that are too vast cannot last; they succumb, sooner or later, to a coalition between the other nations. That one nation should rule over another is always a danger to the common liberty, for a nation that is too powerful, like a too powerful sovereign, has a difficulty in keeping within the limits of a wise moderation. If the desire for domination be of value as a motive force in politics, why should not moral domination achieved through science, literature, and institutions be made the object of the activity of nations?

Skeptics are disposed to smile when they hear moralists express the hope that international wars will cease, and that arbitration will take the place of recourse to force. Lord Salisbury, however, who at one time considered this hope a dream, is now of opinion that it is realizable. "Civilization," he has said, "has substituted law court decisions for duels between private persons and conflicts between the great. International wars are destined in the same way to give place to the courts of arbitration of a more advanced civilization." In 1883 Switzerland and the ¬United States pledged themselves to submit to a court of arbitration all difficulties arising between them during a period of thirty years. In 1888 France contracted a similar engagement with the Equatorial Republic. In 1890 the plenipotentiaries of seventeen American Republics, assembled at Washington, admitted the principle of permanent arbitration.

It may be hoped, in consequence, that war will become rarer and rarer in proportion to the progress of civilization and of the moral and economical solidarity existing between different nations. The new engines of war, the destructive force of which augments every day, also contribute to the maintenance of peace, because peoples and sovereigns recoil in terror from the frightful consequences of a war waged with such formidable engines of destruction. The tendency of public opinion is more and more to compel Governments to maintain peace. It may be hoped in consequence that war, which is already more civilized, will become of rare occurrence.

Still, as peoples and sovereigns have a tendency to become intoxicated by success, historians and moralists ought to unite their efforts to combat their unruly impulses. Historians, who habitually admire success, too often forget, when narrating wars, to inquire into their morality and utility; they almost always exalt the conquerors, and in this way corrupt public opinion, by accustoming it to allow itself to be dazzled by success. They should keep a little of the admiration they lavish upon conquerors for the upright men who have given evidence of their love of humanity and of their respect for human life.

As to the moralists, it is necessary that they should unceasingly combat the sophisms of immoral politics by declaring that reasons of State are the negation of reason; that the object of government is not to divide but to unite; that the lesser morality does not destroy the higher morality, because there are not two moralities; that public safety lies in justice alone: that the end does not justify the means; that illegitimate means result in the end being unattained; that right is superior to might; that justice is the supreme law; that the maxim that right is on the side of the strongest is a maxim good enough for wolves but not for men.

Science without conscience, Rabelais has said, is the ruin of the soul. Politics without morality are the ruin of society.

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今晚开会了，本来很惭愧的，很多天都没有更新了，不过看看情况，大家也差不多嘛，1月9号和11号都没有人发comments了，所以我差的没有想象的那么多，而且跟帖的除了楼主，就只有2个人，欣慰多了...好吧，我知道迟早要还，但是恐怕真的不是现在，我的8门连考，我来咯！

zhengchangdianUID: 2563082

Illiberal(狭隘的) politics
America's unjust sex lawsAug 6th 2009
From The Economist print edition

An ever harsher approach is doing more harm than good, but it is being copied around the world

IT IS an oft（再三）-told story, but it does not get any less horrific on repetition. Fifteen years ago, a paedophile（恋童癖） enticed（引诱） seven-year-old Megan Kanka into his home in New Jersey by offering to show her a puppy（小狗）. He then raped her, killed her and dumped her body in a nearby park. The murderer, who had recently moved into the house across the street from his victim, had twice before been convicted of sexually assaulting a child. Yet Megan’s parents had no idea of this. Had they known he was a sex offender, they would have told their daughter to stay away from him.

In their grief, the parents started a petition, demanding that families should be told if a sexual predator moves nearby. Hundreds of thousands signed it. In no time at all（马上）, lawmakers in New Jersey granted their wish. And before long, “Megan’s laws” had spread to every American state.
America’s sex-offender laws are the strictest of any rich democracy. Convicted rapists and child-molesters（性骚扰） are given long prison sentences.

When released, they are put on sex-offender registries（注册表）. In most states this means that their names, photographs and addresses are published online, so that fearful parents can check whether a child-molester lives nearby. Under the Adam Walsh Act of 2006, another law named after a murdered child, all states will soon be obliged to make their sex-offender registries public. Such rules are extremely popular. Most parents will support any law that promises to keep their children safe. Other countries are following America’s example, either importing Megan’s laws or increasing penalties: after two little girls were murdered by a school caretaker, Britain has imposed multiple conditions on who can visit schools.

Which makes it all the more important to ask whether America’s approach is the right one. In fact its sex-offender laws have grown self-defeatingly harsh (see article). They have been driven by a ratchet effect（棘轮效应）. Individual American politicians have great latitude（自由） to propose new laws. Stricter curbs on paedophiles win votes. And to sound severe, such curbs must be stronger than the laws in place（生效的法律）, which in turn were proposed by politicians who wished to appear tough（强硬的） themselves. Few politicians dare to vote against such laws, because if they do, the attack ads practically write themselves.

A whole Wyoming of offenders
In all, 674,000 Americans are on sex-offender registries—more than the population of Vermont, North Dakota or Wyoming. The number keeps growing partly because in several states registration is for life and partly because registries are not confined to the sort of murderer who ensnared（诱捕） Megan Kanka. According to Human Rights Watch, at least five states require registration for people who visit prostitutes, 29 require it for consensual sex（两厢情愿发生性关系） between young teenagers and 32 require it for indecent exposure（猥亵暴露）. Some prosecutors（检察官） are now stretching the definition of “distributing child pornography（色情）” to include teens who text half-naked photos of themselves to their friends.

How dangerous are the people on the registries? A state review of one sample in Georgia found that two-thirds of them posed little risk. For example, Janet Allison was found guilty of being “party to（参加） the crime of child molestation” because she let her 15-year-old daughter have sex with a boyfriend. The young couple later married. But Ms Allison will spend the rest of her life publicly branded as a sex offender.
Several other countries have sex-offender registries, but these are typically held by the police and are hard to view. In America it takes only seconds to find out about a sex offender: some states have a “click to print” icon on their websites so that concerned citizens can put up posters with the offender’s mugshot on trees near his home. Small wonder（奇迹，惊奇） most sex offenders report being harassed. A few have been murdered. Many are fired because someone at work has Googled them.

Registration is often just the start. Sometimes sex offenders are barred from living near places where children congregate. In Georgia no sex offender may live or work within 1,000 feet (300 metres) of a school, church, park, skating rink（溜冰场） or swimming pool. In Miami an exclusion zone of 2,500 feet has helped create a camp（营） of homeless offenders under a bridge.

Make the punishment fit the crime
There are three main arguments for reform. First, it is unfair to impose harsh penalties for small offences. Perhaps a third of American teenagers have sex before they are legally allowed to, and a staggering（惊人的） number have shared revealing photographs with each other. This is unwise, but hardly a reason for the law to ruin their lives. Second, America’s sex laws often punish not only the offender, but also his family. If a man who once slept with his 15-year-old girlfriend is barred for ever from taking his own children to a playground, those children suffer.
Third, harsh laws often do little to protect the innocent. The police complain that having so many petty（小） sex offenders on registries makes it hard to keep track of the truly dangerous ones. Cash that might be spent on treating sex offenders—which sometimes works—is spent on huge indiscriminate（随意的） registries. Public registers drive serious offenders underground, which makes them harder to track and more likely to reoffend. And registers give parents a false sense of security: most sex offenders are never even reported, let alone convicted.

It would not be hard to redesign America’s sex laws. Instead of lumping（混为一谈，一概而论） all sex offenders together on the same list for life, states should assess each person individually and include only real threats. Instead of posting everything on the internet, names could be held by the police, who would share them only with those, such as a school, who need to know. Laws that bar sex offenders from living in so many places should be repealed, because there is no evidence that they protect anyone: a predator can always travel. The money that a repeal saves could help pay for monitoring compulsive（强迫） molesters more intrusively（侵入性）—through ankle bracelets（脚镯） and the like.

In America it may take years to unpick（拆开） this. However practical and just the case for reform, it must overcome political cowardice（怯懦）, the tabloid（小报） media and parents’ understandable fears. Other countries, though, have no excuse for committing the same error. Sensible（明智的） sex laws are better than vengeful ones.

http://www.economist.com/opinion/displayStory.cfm?story_id=14165460&source=login_payBarrier

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相关AW题目：

17"There are two types of laws: just and unjust. Every individual in a society has a responsibility to obey just laws and, even more importantly, to disobey and resist unjust laws."

174"Laws should not be rigid or fixed. Instead, they should be flexible enough to take account of various circumstances, times, and places."

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Comment：

This special article has stirred up my deepest emotion against the unjust sex laws in America. According to the author, an individual has to be labeled as a horrific sex offender all his life even if he has merely acquiesced an illegal sexual behavior of his family members before. Statues like this have provided such a low entrance hurdle that a staggering number are convicted of sexual criminals.

The disadvantages of severe penalties, such as the inevitable discrimination and sequential unemployment as well as isolation, sow the seeds of misfortune for sexual offenders released from the prison. No wonder depression and vengeance would dominate a citizen with a poor heart when he is deprived of self-pride and freedom. In this circumstance, one is barred from mending his way and restarting a brand new life.

Besides, such excessive legislation would trigger more violence than appropriate threat of punishment. Instead of leaving the victims alive, for instance, the sex offender may murder anyone who might discover his crime in consideration of his rest miserable life.

Given the indiscriminate conviction and the disastrous consequences, the sex laws have to be re-codified to establish a sound legislation and assure the real safety in society.


错词：stirred  labeled acquiesce  illegal  behavior  sequential  trigger  victims  disastrous

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Background  knowledge：

ratchet effect：

     棘轮效应(ratchet effects)一词最初来自对苏联式计划经济制度的研究。在计划体制下，企业的年度生产指标根据上年的实际生产不断调整，好的表现反而由此受到惩罚(因此，聪明的经理用隐瞒生产能力来对付计划当局)。这种标准随业绩上升的趋向被称为“棘轮效应”。其实，这种现象普遍存在于经济、管理领域，当然也存在于项目管理过程中。
　　所谓棘轮效应，又称制轮作用，是指人的消费习惯形成之后有不可逆性，即易于向上调整，而难于向下调整。尤其是在短期内消费是不可逆的，其习惯效应较大。这种习惯效应，使消费取决于相对收入，即相对于自己过去的高峰收入。
　　棘轮效应是经济学家杜森贝里提出的。古典经济学家凯恩斯主张消费是可逆的，即绝对收入水平变动必然立即引起消费水平的变化。针对这一观点，杜森贝认为这实际上是不可能的，因为消费决策不可能是一种理想的计划，它还取决于消费习惯。这种消费习惯受许多因素影响，如生理和社会需要、个人的经历、个人经历的后果等。特别是个人在收入最高期所达到的消费标准对消费习惯的形成有很重要的作用。
　　实际上棘轮效应可以用宋代政治家和文学家司马光一句著名的话来概括：由俭入奢易，由奢入俭难。这句话出自他写给儿子司马康的一封家书《训俭示康》中，除了“由俭入奢易，由奢入俭难”的著名论断，他还说： “俭，德之共也；侈，恶之大也”，司马光秉承清白家风，不喜奢侈浪费，倡导俭朴为美，他写此家书的目的在于告诫儿子不可沾染纨绔之气，保持俭朴清廉的家庭传统。
　　在物质不再匮乏，生活必须品不再靠计划供应的今天，在保健品、营养品、吃饭穿衣以及文娱活动极其丰富的家庭生活环境里，再提“由奢入俭”是不是有些不合时宜。
　　诚然，棘轮效应是出于人的一种本性，人生而有欲，“饥而欲食，寒而欲暧”，这是人与生俱来的欲望。人有了欲望就会千方百计地寻求满足。

plukaUID: 2721764

俺一开始都快忽略掉ratchet effect了= =看东西不认真哪……唉

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Education: The Great EvasionMonday, May. 19, 1952

Modern U.S. educators are always trying to define the "aims" of education. But to a swelling chorus of critics, the definitions have a hollow sound. Last week, in an eloquent little book called Faith and Education (Abingdon-Cokesbury, $2), one of Manhattan's leading Protestant clergymen told why. The Rev. George A. Buttrick. longtime (25 years) pastor of the Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church, believes that modern education is nothing more than one gigantic evasion.

"We are told," says Dr. Buttrick, quoting Harvard's James Bryant Conant, "that education is preparation for the 'good life,' but neither the word 'good' nor the word 'life' is given any content. Or we are told [by John S. Brubacher] that the 'general aim' of education 'is only that of pupil growth.' But what kind of 'growth'? . . . Or we are told [by William Heard Kilpatrick] that education must assume 'increasing responsibility for participation in projecting ideas of social change.' But again we must ask: What kind of change and in what direction? . . ."

Cash & Gadgets. These questions, says Dr. Buttrick, the educators do not answer, for "recent education has almost deified an attitude of suspended judgment, blind to the fact that while suspended judgment may be possible in matters of opinion or unfinished scientific research, it is not possible on any deeper level of life. We may suspend judgment . . . about the cause of the sudden inroad of lamprey eels in Lake Michigan, but we cannot suspend judgment on whether to steal or be honest, or on whether man is a mechanism or a soul.

"The cult of 'objective study' likewise cannot stand scrutiny . . . The mockery is so complete that the whole foundation of our education must now be questioned. For education has assumed that human nature is a receptacle for 'facts,' and that this diet of facts will of itself somehow lead to knowledge, and that knowledge by an even more mysterious alchemy will then become wisdom . . . Education has pinned its faith to a fictitious 'progress,' blandly believing that man is a romantic creature destined to walk the road of evolution 'more and more unto the perfect day.' Every tenet of this creed has been falsified: progress has become a rather nasty mixture of cash and gadgets, and the road of evolution has reached—Buchenwald!"

The Homeless. The fact is that these "aims" of education are not aims but escapes; "the uneasiness that comes of letting major issues go by default has fallen like mildew on our schools." The real aim of education cannot be "different from the total purpose of life . . . The realm of education may be like a field within a farm: it may cultivate a special crop. But the crop must still serve the purpose of the whole farm."

The major question that education must face, in short, is God, for "if God is the sovereign fact of life, God is the sovereign fact for education . . . Education cannot live under any hermetic seal, but only under the countersign of man's nature and destiny. If God is, education must live under the acknowledgment of God."

In acknowledging God, says Dr. Buttrick, the educator cannot compromise with half measures; he cannot "be content to let the student add God as an extracurricular according to choice . . . the blasphemy which says of God: 'Season according to taste.' " What is needed leanings. In the U.S., educators became more & more absorbed with the equally radical ideas of Columbia's John Dewey. Even some of her own followers betrayed her: they transformed her doctrine of guided freedom into a doctrine of anarchy, and many educators turned away in disgust.

Though old and exiled, Maria Montessori continued to preach. She wandered to Barcelona, where she had to be rescued by a British cruiser during the civil war. She went to India, where she was interned as an enemy alien. And she went to The Netherlands, where she set up a new training center. Wherever she went, her message was always the same. "You must fight for the rights of the child," she would exclaim, and hundreds of educators were still inspired to take up the cry.

Last week, in The Netherlands, Maria Montessori's own fight came to an end. She had helped to revolutionize a whole generation's concept of primary education, but at 81, she had no intention of stopping there. Her last words were directed to her adopted son Mario, who has gradually taken over her work: "What are you planning for the reform of the world?"

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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)

Ever since this clause was written into the Bill of Rights, most Americans have considered the separation of church & state beyond debate. But an increasing number of Americans also deplore one by-product of this separation, which the Founding Fathers probably never had in mind: the almost complete exclusion of religion from the public schools and colleges.

In many state-operated schools, religion is as unmentionable as syphilis was in Victorian parlors. Result: a generation of religious illiterates—who perhaps know how to read & write, but not how, why or what to believe.

When the National Conference of Christians and Jews asked George Zook (TIME, Aug. 12) what to do about it, he thought at first that the question was "too hot a potato" for his powerful but conglomerate American Council on Education. But after reconsidering, he named a committee of thirteen educators to set down the basic principles on which they could agree. The committee, headed by F. Ernest Johnson of Columbia's Teachers College, included Protestant, Catholic and Jewish members (but no agnostics). Among them: Frank P. Graham, president of the University of North Carolina; Msgr. Frederick G. Hochwalt, director of education for the National Catholic Welfare Conference.

Last week, after more than two years' study, the committee published its conclusions, The Relation oj Religion to Public Education (American Council on Education; $1). Main thesis, as summed up by George Zook: "Schools should accept religion and the churches as a factor of social life, just as much as they do the waterworks." 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" religion acceptable to nobody.

Said the committee: "We who write this report are members of religious bodies to which we owe allegiance by conviction. For us, the democratic faith . . . rests on a religious conception of human destiny. . . . [We] believe that the American people are deeply, though not always articulately, conscious of a religious heritage to whose central values they want their children to be committed. . . .

"It is not the business of public education to secure adherence to any particular religious system. . . . But we believe it is the business of public education to impel the young toward a vigorous, decisive personal reaction to the challenge of religion. . . . A first step is to break through the wall of ignorance about religion and to increase the number of contacts with it."

The committee's ideas on how to break through the wall:

¶ "In the study of ... community life—government, markets, industry, labor, welfare, and the like—there [is no] reason for the omission of contemporary religious institutions and practices."

¶ "The study of the religious classics . . . in the regular literature program [should be expanded]. . . . The Bible is second to none 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, 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 by fear and cringing 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 Bible be read. The committee would like to see each student study the version of his own faith.

zhengchangdianUID: 2563082

Comment：

Two forces——Government and Religion——always want to have power over the other one in spite of their endless fights with null results. In fact, religion has served as both a sword and a shield for the establishment of glory dignity and the security of abosolute adherence to the government.  For instance, the famous Cardinal Bishop is just a spokesman of the Roman King.

Well, this passage talks about the ignorance of religious education and offers a few plights the American are faced with. In my points of view, it is not wise to conpel the students to learn religion as a course before the answer of which religion to teach flout on the surface. As we all know, the bickering among the various Christian sects has already been a troublesome headache for hundreds of years. Besides, ethnic identity have trapped in the mash of religion overlook, let alone to say the embarrassing situation of racial discrimination.

Fortunately, racial discrimination and segregation have already been put on the agenda of goverment bills in recent years. However, ethnic identity has been obscured by the stengthen of national identity gradually. Under the atmosphere of discrimination, the migrants show a diversified trend of assimilation: the first generation of immgrants show a mainly insists on an immigrant identity of their homeculture, and the second generation mainly insists on an ethnic identity or Afro-American identity. In such circumstances, no wonder the appearance of religious identity comes into being.

zhengchangdianUID: 2563082

今天被草版批评了，但是我真的要考试嘛，好伤心哦，:mad:

今天的刚好1h，就这样吧，还要背背书，明早8点就考试了，还因为这个弄得这么晚，5555~~
算了，背书去了！