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

I'm So Bored With the NEA

Artists demand "stimulus" subsidies.

Greg Beato from the May 2009 issue FROM REASOM

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 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 opportunist peddling its troubled assets to federal sugar daddies: They argued that our chamber music societies and tap dancing foundations are too economically significant to fail. 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.”

Do the math on that one and the results are undeniably impressive: If we applied all $787 billion of Bailout: The Sequel 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 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?

In the early 1960s, when our highest elected officials began evangelizing for the creation of state-sponsored arts programs, there was little talk 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.

Today, Presidents Kennedy and Johnson would no doubt be pleased to see how enlarged—swollen, in fact—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, sit in the cheap seats, and commit to at least three performances. Also, there’s this thing called the Internet.

In such a competitive, oversupplied environment, is a lack of funding really the primary reason that not every Midwestern dance troupe is thriving? Will throwing money at highbrow 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 cable hook-ups, sabotaging iPods, and paying modestly talented environmental sculptors not to create. That way, we might actually have some spare attention to give new orchestral works and accordion festivals.

In the early 1990s, when the NEA was helping underwrite 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 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 discourse could appreciate it on an abstract level at least. The arts bureaucracy was itself a work of conceptual art.

Today the agency is careful to fund nothing more controversial than bilingual puppetry epics. And given the glut of cultural opportunities that now bedevil 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.

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 organization with a message that belies America’s foundational themes of pluralism and democracy. The wrangling 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 investment bankers—and simply asked for more money. No wonder so few people go to performance art happenings these days.

zhengchangdianUID: 2563082

Comment：

I feel so sorry to rush through such a beautiful article with no time to linger over so many interesting details. So there comes my brief comment.

Recently, an unprecedented market has been born in the financial crisis. The slumping economy, numerous bankruptcy and increasing unemployment have already forced us to the edge of horrific cliff. Surprisingly, the art market is experiencing its springtime of life. Not only do the art works auctions go ahead like wildfire, the non-profit art organizations and their audiences also generate a quantity of full time jobs as well as government revenues. Maybe this circumstance is not the original intention of art, however, it has brought considerable novelty and pleasant surprise to man in depression. Of course, this does not mean we are suffering from the art regression, but a new function of art is waving in front.

错字： unprecedented  financial organizations revenues

zhengchangdianUID: 2563082

Electromagnetic manufacturing
It's a knockoutEngineers find a new way to punch holes through steel
Jan 14th 2010
From The Economist print edition


Shutterstock
ELECTROMAGNETIC pulses (EMPs) are usually associated with warfare.The idea is to use a blast of energy to fry the enemy’s computers andtelecommunications gear. One common way proposed to do this is with anatomic bomb. In a less extreme fashion, however, EMPs have peacefuluses. They are already employed industrially to shape soft and lightmetals, such as aluminium and copper. Now a group of researchers at theFraunhofer Institute for Machine Tools and Forming Technology inChemnitz, Germany, has found a way to use an EMP device to shape andpunch holes through industry’s metallic heavyweight—steel. This couldtransform manufacturing by doing away with the need to use large, heavypresses to make goods ranging from cars to washing machines.
    Verena Kräusel and her colleagues performed their trick by beefingup an existing electromagnetic-forming machine. Such machines use abank of capacitors to discharge a current rapidly through a coil. Thecoil converts the current into a powerful magnetic field. When thecomponent to be worked is placed next to such a machine, the coilinduces in it a corresponding field. Like poles repel, and therepulsion between the two fields is strong enough to make the metaldistort.
    Dr Kräusel and her colleagues boosted the power of their machine bystrengthening its coil and speeding up the rate at which the capacitorsdump their charge. The result is an extremely strong field—one thatdelivers enough pressure when it hits the steel to punch out thematerial next to it, leaving a hole behind. The impact pressure on thesteel is about 3,500 atmospheres. That is the weight of three smallcars pressing on an area only a centimetre or so square.
    The result is that the machine is able to punch holes 30mm indiameter through the type of sheet steel used to build car bodies,which is usually around 1mm thick. The group have also used theirmachine to punch holes in hardened steel, including stainless steel.And, besides punching holes in steel, such a machine could also be usedto form shapes out of the metal without the need to use a mould or adie.
Firms such as Germany’s giant carmaker Volkswagen are sponsoring theproject because forming steel components with an EMP device provides anumber of advantages. Although using a heavy press to bend metal andcut holes in it is fast, the tearing action at the edges of the holesleaves ragged, sharp tailings, known as burrs. This means that partsstamped out this way have to be cleaned up, usually by hand, whichincreases production costs. The need to keep replacing the stamps anddies used by the press, as they become blunt, also adds to the expense.
    Lasers are one alternative. They can cut cleaner holes in steel, butthey are slower than stamping because they need to burn their wayaround the part. They are also expensive to operate. An electromagneticpunch, however, stamps its hole without tearing the metal, which meansno burrs are left behind, and it never gets blunt. In fact, says DrKräusel, her machine can punch a hole clean through a sheet of steel ina fifth of second—compared with the 1.4 seconds needed by a laser.
    The team members are now carrying out further development work onthe coil. They expect factories to take up the idea quickly, because itis a modification of equipment that is already familiar. The size ofholes that can be cut depends on the size of the coil, so specificcoils will be needed for each application. Specific punches, however,are needed for traditional presses, so this would not seem to be adeterrent—especially as an EMP device should be able to deliverconsistently accurate blows without wearing itself out. A hole, newtechnology, as it were.

zhengchangdianUID: 2563082

今天的还是1h。

Comment：

New finds give man more power to dominate the nature. Two sects in the kingdom of science——abstract science and applied science——have laid the foundation of such an  advanced modern civilization since the Industrial Revolution inaugurated a new era. This passage introduces a new applied technology functioning at punch holes through steel without burning the metal. Not only does the finding imply a new way for cutting metal, it also ventures a step toward transforming materials with tenderness. The harmony of man and nature, the blend of the ancient and the iron-and-cement-made metropolis need planer and designer to endow them spirit. Similarly, science is guiding mankind to a more gentle world.

错字： inaugurated

zhengchangdianUID: 2563082

1.20

Using Light and Genes to Probe the Brain

Optogenetics emerges as a potent tool to study the brain's inner workings

By Gary Stix   

In 1979 Francis Crick, famed co-discoverer of DNA’s structure, published an article in Scientific American that set out a wish list of techniques needed to fundamentally improve understanding of the way the brain processes information. High on his wish list was a method of gaining control over specific classes of neurons while, he wrote, “leaving the others more or less unaltered.”

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. The advent of what is known as optogenetics has even captured popular attention because of its ability to alter animal behavior—one research group demonstrated how light piped into a mouse’s brain can drive it to turn endlessly in circles. Such feats have inspired much public comment, including a joke made by comedian Jay Leno in 2006 about the prospect for an optogenetically controlled fly pestering George W. Bush.

Controlling a subordinate or a spouse with a souped-up laser pointer may be essential for science-fiction dystopia and late-night humor, but in reality optogenetics has emerged as the most important new technology for providing insight into the numbingly complex circuitry of the mammalian brain. It has already furnished clues as to how neural miswiring underlies neurological and mental disorders, including Parkinson’s disease and schizophrenia.

A seminal event that sparked widespread neuroscience interest came in 2005, when Karl Deisseroth and his colleagues at Stanford University and at the Max Planck Institute for Biophysics in Frankfurt demonstrated how a virus could be used to deliver a light-sensitive gene called channelrhodopsin-2 into specific sets of mammalian neurons. Once equipped with the gene (taken from pond algae), the neurons fired when exposed to light pulses. A box on Crick’s list could be checked off: this experiment and ones that were soon to follow showed how it would be possible to trigger or extinguish selected neurons, and not their neighbors, in just a few milliseconds, the speed at which they normally fire. Hundreds of laboratories worldwide have since adopted Deisseroth’s technique.

A 38-year-old psychiatrist by training who still sees patients once a week, Deisseroth entered the field of bioengineering because of his frustration over the inadequate tools available to research and treat mental illness and neurodegenerative disorders. “I have conducted many brain-stimulation treatments in psychiatry that suffered greatly from a lack of precision. You can stimulate certain cells that you want to target, but you also stimulate all of the wrong cells as well,” he says. Instead of just observing the effects from a drug or an implanted electrode, optogenetics brings researchers closer to the fundamental causes of a behavior.

Since 2005 Deisseroth’s laboratory—at times in collaboration with leading neuroscience groups—has assembled a powerful tool kit based on channelrhodopsin-2 and other so-called opsins. By adjusting the opening or closing of channels in cell membranes, opsins can switch neurons on or turn them off. Molecular legerdemain can also manipulate just a subset of one type of neuron or control a circuit between groups of selected neurons in, say, the limbic system and others in the cortex. Deisseroth has also refined methods for delivering the opsin genes, typically by inserting into a virus both opsin genes and DNA to turn on those genes.

To activate the opsins, Deisseroth’s lab has attached laser diodes to tiny fiber-optic cables that reach the brain’s innermost structures. Along with the optical fibers, electrodes are implanted that record when neurons fire. “In the past year what’s happened is that these techniques have gone from being something interesting and useful in limited applications to something generalizable to any cell or question in biology,” Deisseroth says.

Most compelling, however, are experiments that have demonstrated te relevance of optogenetics to both basic science and medicine. At the Society for Neuroscience meeting in Chicago last October, Michael Häusser of University College London reported on an optogenetics experiment that showed how 100 neurons could trigger a memory stored in a much larger ensemble of about 100,000 neurons, suggesting how the technique may be used to understand memory formation.

Last spring Deisseroth’s group published an optogenetics study that helped to elucidate the workings of deep-brain stimulation, which uses electrodes implanted deep in the brain to alleviate the abnormal movements of Parkinson’s disease. The experiment called into question the leading theory of how the technology works—activation of an area called the subthalamic nucleus. Instead the electrodes appear to exert their effects on nerve fibers that reach the subthalamic nucleus from the motor cortex and perhaps other areas. The finding has already led to a better understanding of how to deploy deep-brain electrodes. Given its fine-tuned specificity, optoelectronics might eventually replace deep-brain stimulation.

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.”

Note: this story was originally printed with the title "A Light in the Brain"

zhengchangdianUID: 2563082

占

zhengchangdianUID: 2563082

The weakest linksNew capital and liquidity rules will make the average bank safer. But what about the outliers?
Jan 21st 2010
From The Economist print edition

IT IS bonus season again. Bankers get bashed and governments inventways to tax them, most recently Barack Obama’s plan to charge banks anannual insurance fee. Amid all the rancour (see article),some say it is important to regain a sense of perspective. Banks havebeen bailed out throughout history. People hate it, but they would hatethe devastation that a collapse would bring even more. Besides,finance’s wild-west era is over. The Basel club of regulators istightening its rules and there is talk of new curbs on proprietarytrading.
Problem solved, then? Unfortunately not. The pact between societyand banks has changed dramatically over the years. Once, banks gotliquidity support from a lender of last resort. In the 20th centurythey got state-backed deposit-guarantee schemes. And now they enjoy animplicit blanket guarantee of all their liabilities, allowing them toborrow cheaply. All this has let the industry operate with smallersafety buffers than in the past, and balloon in size. Relative to thesize of the economy, Britain’s banks are ten times larger than in 1970.
That blanket guarantee is unfair. Some of the subsidy is passed onto banks’ customers, but much goes to their staff. It may beunsustainable: the assets of America’s banks are now as big as its GDP,taxpayers in most rich countries are underwriting systems several timeslarger than their economies, and it is unclear whether tiny Icelandwill honour its commitments. The guarantee is also dangerous. As anycapitalist knows, firms with subsidised funding and no risk of failureusually misallocate capital and can be dysfunctional, as the mortgageagencies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac demonstrate.
The Basel club is making a decent fist of rewriting its rules oncapital and liquidity, forcing the banks to operate with larger safetybuffers. But regulators must be brutally honest about what thesereforms will achieve. The banking system is only as strong as itsweakest links, and even the new, bigger buffers would not have beenenough to prevent the worst blow-ups of the past two years (see article).That is understandable: banks’ capital would need to double to dealwith the risk that they might be the next Merrill Lynch or UBS. Passingthe cost of that on to customers could hurt the economy.
If the state is thus doomed to bail out tomorrow’s basket cases, itshould charge for the guarantee banks get. One option, which Mr Obamahas proposed and which this newspaper has supported, is a “liabilitylevy” on banks’ debt to recoup the subsidy they get from artificiallylow borrowing costs. Banks already pay a similar levy on their insureddeposits; a liability levy would hit investment banks, too. It shouldhelp to rein in bonuses somewhat, and could fund a bail-out kitty. Sucha levy addresses some of the problems that arise from the blanketguarantee, but in the long run it would be best to withdraw it. Thatwill not be easy. Banks’ creditors must suffer losses if taxpayers areto avoid bail-outs. Yet if all creditors and counterparties fear loss,they will run from a weak bank, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy.What is needed is a way to create the halfway house of partialbankruptcy.
Building a half-way houseOne option is for banks to issue so-called “Coco” bonds that convertinto equity if capital gets too low, although no one really knows howsuch instruments would behave in a crisis. Another is to give aresolution agency powers to deal with bad banks. This agency cannot bejust a glorified contingency planner, but it cannot be a despot either,otherwise terrified creditors and counterparties will run ifintervention seems likely. It needs absolute authority to imposelosses, but over only part of a bank’s balance-sheet. This wouldrequire banks to ring-fence the bits worth saving (such as retaildeposits), or force them to carry debt that gets a mandatory haircut ifthe state has to step in. All big banks would have an implicitguarantee, but it would not cover their entire balance-sheets.
It is all too easy to pretend that new capital and liquidity bufferswill be enough to prevent the need for future bail-outs, but it isunlikely to be the case. Devising a way to impose controlled losses onfailed banks’ creditors, and convincing markets that it really will beused next time there is a crisis, will be difficult. But anyone with asense of perspective can only conclude that public backing of financehas reached unacceptable levels. Solving that problem must beregulators’ priority.

zhengchangdianUID: 2563082

占

zhengchangdianUID: 2563082

Women
This house believes that women in the developed world have never had it so good.

The moderator's rebuttal remarks
Jan 22nd 2010 | Adrian Wooldridge  

This debate has got off to an excellent start: we thank our debaters and the many people who have contributed online. Now the debaters have laid out their starting propositions, the arguments are beginning to deepen, with serious questions asked about what success means and what it means to say that women have never had it so good.

Terry O'Neill rightly objects to the complacency implied by "never had it so good" (which is why, of course, Harold Macmillan's phrase became notorious in the first place). This complacency implies that women should call it a day rather than continue to agitate for a better deal.

She points out that even though women have lots more choices than they used to have, their choices are still more constrained than men's. They invest in their educations only to drop out of full-time work when they have children. They are granted a theoretical right to abortion only to see abortion clinics closed down.

She also points out that sexism is still more widespread than polite people recognise. Female political candidates are subjected to a level of personal scrutiny, some of it strikingly vitriolic, that men do not have to endure. I was shocked, in covering the last presidential campaign, about the sort of things that were said, in public and even more in private, about Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin.

Richard Donkin starts off by sticking closely to the terms of the motion. He believes that there is no doubt that women in the developed world are better off now than they have ever been. But then—as if he were not already on dangerous enough ground as a man defending the notion—he raises the question of whether some feminists have defined success too narrowly. What about women who are more interested in motherhood than the economic rat race? His point is that women should not be prisoners of a calculus that has them constantly competing with men for quantitative equality: they need to stop for a moment, celebrate their achievements and then ask some deeper questions about where they want out of their lives.

So far the voting is going heavily in favour of the proposition. But I would suggest that people ought to bear two things in mind before voting for the motion. The first is Ms O'Neill's point about self-satisfaction. "You've never had it so good" is not simply an objective description of historical change. It is also a suggestion that you should be happy with where you are. The second is that there is some evidence that women are not better off than they used to be. I have already mentioned that living standards have been stagnating. Several studies also suggest that people are no happier than they used to be. The fact that women have conflicting choices—particularly over whether they should find fulfilment in motherhood or careers—is creating a great deal of angst. And in trying to do both things many women are bearing a burden that their mothers were spared.

The proposer's rebuttal remarks

Jan 22nd 2010 | Richard Donkin  

In entering this debate we were asked to consider the proposition that women in the developed world had never had it so good. Since that is the proposition I will confine my remarks to debating that point and that point alone.

The problem with steering the debate in another direction, however much we may sympathise with the arguments and frustrations in doing so, is that it avoids discussion of the specific motion. Moreover, it removes the opportunity for women to take stock of their lives, to look around and to make some comparisons of then and now.

If we had been invited to discuss the plight of people—not just women—in the developing world, we would have needed far more than the space allotted here. But this debate is focused on women in the developed world and the general question of whether they are better off now than they have ever been.

The debate, I should add, is not seeking to determine whether women are better off than men in the workplace. As has been established, and I would not quibble with any of the evidence on women's pay, the struggle for equal pay for equal responsibilities in the workplace between men and women has a long way to run. But that is not the proposition.

The question we are here to discuss is whether women in developed countries today are better off than their mothers were. I do not think that this debate is necessarily about pay and careers but about perceptions, and self-perceptions at that. What do we mean by "never had it so good"?

Are women simply going to measure their progress in society by financial comparisons? Isn't that the sort of thing that men do? I thought women were smarter than that.

Many working women today will have had an entirely different experience of the workplace from that of their mothers, some of whom may never have held down a full-time job. Does that mean that these modern women can view themselves as better off than their mothers were?

The answer depends on the way an individual woman understands her role in society. An important consideration here must be self-fulfilment and, as Fay Weldon the novelist once said, men are irrelevant in women's considerations. "Women are happy or unhappy, fulfilled or unfulfilled, and it has nothing to do with men," said Weldon. That is harsh, but women must believe this of themselves if they are to reshape a better future than the conflict-strewn path of history carved by men.

This brings us to the nub of the debate: do women have a better opportunity today to realise their potential than they did in the past? I think the answer must be a resounding "yes".

Within western industrialised nations, at least, young women today are rarely singled out by their parents, as my wife was, and channelled into a career that, in her case, her father decided would be a "good career for a woman. When I was at school, 35 years ago, careers advice for most of my female contemporaries did not extend much beyond suggestions of teaching or filling some clerical roll. Today women get the same educational opportunities as boys without assumptions that they will be seeking to pursue a particular predestined career path.

A generation ago there were few of the safeguards in the employment system that protect women today. Sexual discrimination laws were in their infancy and equal opportunities legislation was just beginning to make a difference. Today all that has changed.

If there is modern discrimination against women in contemporary education it is probably directed at those who might want to raise a family at home. That option is no longer on the agenda for those in school or college. Women are educated today in order to fulfil an economic role in society. The traditional role of motherhood, they find, must be slotted within career breaks, then juggled in ever more complex organisational demands of combining salaried work with domestic cares.

That cannot be right. I would like to see leaders of the feminist movement fighting to restore the dignity of motherhood in our lives. Men need to be part of that struggle, directing some of their own ambitions in the direction of good parenting, so that the raising of families is accepted as something that demands equal input and that is valued in society, particularly by governments and employers.

For all the talk of growth economies, of productivity, of richer nations enjoying greater spending power than less successful neighbours, the end game of humanity is not a fistful of dollars but about relative happiness and contentment over a lifetime. Women play a unique role in that equation, always have, always will.

Keeping a family together, raising children as they should be raised, creating responsible citizens: these require values and skills common to all humanity, that transcend rich and poor countries and that should transcend the sexes. Men need to learn this lesson. Women know it innately but my fear is that in the battle for workplace equity they could lose sight of some of the defining aspects of womanhood.

Why is the caring role—whether looking after children or the elderly—perceived by some as a raw deal? Helping children to understand the world around them is one of the most rewarding experiences that life can offer, while sharing the twilight years of the elderly can be equally rewarding if we can rid ourselves of the shabby images of caring: brattish, screaming infants and incoherent oldies gathered round the TV. Care in the family need not be like that, but valuing everything in monetary terms has diminished humanity, importing elements of the production line to birth, life and death.

We can all agree there are still too few women in politics, still too few in the most senior professional and management roles. But we should always take into consideration those women who do not choose this path in life. The late Mother Teresa seemed capable of finding a proper perspective that all of us with families, not just women, could adopt. She said: "Everybody today seems to be in such a terrible rush, anxious for greater developments and greater riches and so on, so that children have very little time for their parents. Parents have very little time for each other, and in the home begins the disruption of peace of the world."

The women's struggle, the women's movement must carry on, but women might do themselves a service if they took stock for a moment, looked around and counted their blessings as much as their victories. It is good to celebrate now and then and women deserve to celebrate for just a moment perhaps. Tomorrow there will be more work and women should embark on the rest of their journey, wherever they believe they should be heading, in the knowledge that they are second to no man. But today it is time to discover their own distinctive futures, an inclusive future for all, not the future of men.

The opposition's rebuttal remarks
Jan 22nd 2010 | Terry O'Neill  

Richard Donkin makes several good points about the progress that women have made in the United States and other developed nations, and I appreciate his agreement that there is "still much work to be done". But I take issue with several of his specific arguments as well as his larger theme.

In his second paragraph, after acknowledging the transformational advancements of the vote, the pill and divorce, Mr Donkin lists a number of other prizes he claims women have won on our continuing march towards equality. Might I suggest a few trades for some of these dubious rewards? How about we exchange Chippendales dancers for freedom from domestic violence and rape? Might we also swap pedicures for an end to the relentless attacks on our reproductive rights? And let us replace retail therapy with women's rights being written into the US constitution. (We'll probably vote to keep multiple orgasms and suits with pants, thank you.)

OK, maybe Mr Donkin was just being cheeky. But really! Did women filch "relatively easy divorces when their marriages didn't work out" or did they finally win the autonomy to liberate themselves from unhappy, abusive marriages? And where Mr Donkin might see a woman raiding her soon to be ex-husband's bank account, I see the sobering reality that women generally fare worse economically than their exes do, largely because of child-care obligations and wage discrimination.

To Mr Donkin's optimism, my response is: if only. The assertion that women in power generally are met with respect, thus they "have nothing left to prove", is a gross overstatement. The US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi have been ridiculed in the media for their appearance and supposedly unladylike drive and ambition. Pundit Tucker Carlson, for instance, has referred multiple times to being afraid of Ms Clinton because he finds her "castrating, overbearing and scary". Ask any woman politician, including the former GOP vice-presidential candidate, Sarah Palin, and I bet she has at least one story where she saw herself portrayed through a lens that focused on her "feminine" characteristics rather than her positions or qualifications. These assessments might seem slight, but they contribute to women not being taken seriously in the workplace, in all industries and at all levels.

It was indeed cause for celebration when the prime minister of Iceland, Johanna Siguroardottir, became Europe's first openly lesbian head of government without much objection. But that hardly means that homophobia, and for that matter racism and other forms of oppression, don't continue to plague developed countries. A woman who is a lesbian, and/or a woman of colour, not to mention a woman with a disability, faces challenges that have yet to be fully dismantled.

Which brings me to my biggest beef with Mr Donkin's argument, and that is his over-arching premise that women have been given more choices than ever, and it is up to us to make the right ones. This has emerged as one of the most common rationales for why feminists should just call it a day, at least in the developed world, and stop pestering everyone with our critique of patriarchal privilege.

In reality, women's choices are severely constrained. Is it really a choice when a woman leaves an otherwise good middle management job because of relentless harassment by men unwilling to accept female leadership? Is it really a choice when a woman drops out of the workforce because her employer won't make any accommodations for her need to care for kids or other family members?

In recent years, the media have reported on the trend of women starting their own businesses, often from home. But here is the rest of the story: women are doing it because they hit the glass ceiling at work, not because of some burning desire to be entrepreneurs. Their work life might be improved in some ways, but not in others, like pay and benefits. Regardless, it can be a forced "choice".

Yes, it is entirely possible for a society to make a number of options legally available to all, while these opportunities remain effectively out of reach for many.

I can think of no better example than women's fundamental right to abortion. We are about to mark the 37th anniversary of the US Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision, which recognised the constitutional right to safe and legal abortion in this country. However, huge numbers of women have no reproductive choice because the government blocks their access to funding for abortion care, which is tantamount to blocking access to services altogether. Clinics and doctors who provide abortion care dwindle as anti-abortion violence and harassment drive them away. And when they continue to care for women in need despite continued threats, heroic physicians like Dr George Tiller are murdered.

Additionally, women's right to abortion care is a perennial political football to be put into play during critical negotiations, such as the recent health-care reform debate in the United States. We might gain a sliver of health insurance reform, but we will surely lose a significant degree of abortion coverage in the process. What other right in the industrialised world is under such constant scrutiny, under such concerted attack, but the right to abortion? That it is a right only women can exercise should not be lost on us.

Lastly, I can help Mr Donkin with the patronising question of what women want. I assure him that our pretty little heads can handle a vast array of choices. But those options must be honest ones, not Catch-22s or false promises. Women want full equality, and we want the space and time to tell you what all that entails. Oh, and we want to stop being told that we never had it so good.

zhengchangdianUID: 2563082

Comment:

While feminist theories have surfaced from time to time in history, the modern feminist's movements root are in the Enlightenment of with its principles with individual justice. In this particularly highly advanced society, self-fulment is becoming the primary measurement of individual value, instead of the number on payroll. No one can deny the progress we have made in the enhancement of feminine social status.

Factually, the women's self-awareness is a key to explain the current circumstance. As known to all, the victory of Hilary Clinton in political field is a typical example of feminist victory. Her wide political stage over the whole world, however, cannot depart from the assistance from her husband. In spite of  the breaking heart and the profound depression brought by the sexual scandal, Hilary lived through this very plight and recognized her obiligation to the world gradually. Man no longer dominate the destiny of women. After their marriage crisis, the Clintons made up their minds to become close political partners. Then there comes her awareness of personal value as well as the holy sense of mission to rescue.

今天的第二段写的，嗯，很乱，就是想说希拉里和克林顿是政治伙伴的问题，不是用婚姻换政治，而且是女性自我觉醒的表率。
今天的文章比较长的，没想到也是1h，感觉实际用时不止。

zhengchangdianUID: 2563082

保卫GPA的战役，初战失败，伤心啊~~
早知道就不看化工原理了，付出那么多但是竟然因为起床起晚了，结果就悲剧了...
不过我还是不会放弃GRE的，哼，老妈，我就是不放弃，哼哼！！！

zhengchangdianUID: 2563082

终于回家啦！嘿嘿，总感觉还迷迷糊糊的，怎么就到家了呢？真是难以想象，从用40分钟收拾行李起，也许就注定了偶的再一次漂泊，不过不管怎样，从今天开始我就能够真真正正的好好准备GRE了，毕竟是我的最后一次机会了，我要顶住，顶住！

zhengchangdianUID: 2563082

[REBORN FROM THE ASHES][comment][01.29]

爱默生的一篇文章，对于理解美国文化很有帮助。生词比较多，文章也有点长（2400字左右），希望大家能克服一下。 Ralph Waldo Emerson: Self-Reliance (1841) I read the other day some verses written by an eminent painter which were original and not conventional. The soul always hears an admonition in such lines, let the subject be what it may. The sentiment they instill is of more value than any thought they may contain. To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men,--that is genius. Speak your latent conviction, and it shall be the universal sense; for the inmost in due time becomes the outmost,--and our first thought is rendered back to us by the trumpets of the Last Judgment. Familiar as the voice of the mind is to each, the highest merit we ascribe to Moses, Plato, and Milton is that they set at naught books and traditions, and spoke not what men, but what they thought. A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the luster of the firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his thought, because it is his. In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts: they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty. Great works of art have no more affecting lesson for US than this. They teach us to abide by our spontaneous impression with good-humored inflexibility then most when the whole Cry of voices is on the other side. Else, to-morrow a stranger will say with masterly good sense precisely what we have thought and felt all the time, and we shall be forced to take with shame our own opinion from another. There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better for worse as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till. The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried. Not for nothing one face, one character, one fact makes much impression on him, and another none. This sculpture in the memory is not without preéstablishcd harmony. The eye was placed where one ray should fall, that it might testify of that particular ray. We but half express ourselves, and are ashamed of that divine idea which each of us represents. It may be safely trusted as proportionate and of good issues, so it be faithfully imparted, but God will not have his work made manifest by cowards. A man is relieved and gay when he has put his heart into his work and done his best; but what he has said or done otherwise shall give hint no peace. It is a deliverance which does not deliver. In the attempt his genius deserts him; no muse befriends; no invention, no hope. Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string. Accept the place the divine providence has found for your the society of your contemporaries, the connection of events. Great men have always done so, and confided themselves childlike to the genius of their age, betraying their perception that the absolutely trustworthy was seated at their heart, working through their hands, predominating in all their being. And we are now men, and must accept in the highest mind the same transcendent destiny; and not minors and invalids in a protected corner, not cowards fleeing before a revolution, but guides, redeemers, and benefactors, obeying the Almighty effort, and advancing on Chaos and the Dark. What pretty oracles nature yields us on this text, in the face and behavior of children, babes, and even brutes! That divided and rebel mind, that distrust of a sentiment because our arithmetic has computed the strength and means opposed to our purpose, these have not. Their mind being whole, their eye is as yet unconquered, and when we look in their faces, we are disconcerted. Infancy conforms to nobody; all conform to it, so that one babe commonly makes four or five out of the adults who prattle and play to it. So God has armed youth and puberty and manhood no less with its own piquancy and charm, and made it enviable and gracious and its claims not to be put by, if it will stand by itself. Do not think the youth has no force, because he cannot speak to you and me. Hark! in the next room his voice is sufficiently clear and emphatic. It seems he knows how to speak to his contemporaries. Bashful or bold, then, he will know how to make us seniors very unnecessary. The nonchalance of boys who are sure of a dinner, and would disdain as much as a lord to do or say aught to conciliate one, is the healthy attitude of human nature. A boy is in the parlor what the pitis in the playhouse; independent; irresponsible, looking out from his corner on such people and facts as pass by, he tries and sentences them on their merits, in the swift, summary ways of boys, as good, bad, interesting, silly, eloquent. troublesome. He numbers himself never about consequences, about interests: he gives an independent, genuine verdict. You must court him: he does not court you. But the man is, as it were, clapped into jail by his consciousness. As soon as he has once acted or spoken with éclat, he is a committed person, watched by the sympathy or the hatred of hundreds, whose affections must now enter into his account. There is no Lethe for this. Ah, that he could pass again into his neutrality! Who can thus avoid all pledges, and having observed, observe again from the same unaffected, unbiased, unbribable, unaffrighted innocence, must always be formidable. He would utter opinions on all passing affairs, which being seen to be not private, but necessary, would sink like darts into the ear of men, and put them in fear. These are the voices which we hear in solitude, but they grow faint and inaudible as we enter into the world. Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members. Society is a joint-stock company, in which the members agree, for the better securing of his bread to each shareholder, to surrender the liberty and culture of the eater. The virtue in most request is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but names and customs. Whoso would be a man, must be a nonconformist. He who would gather immortal palms must not he hindered by the name of goodness, but must explore if it he goodness. Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind. Absolve you to yourself, and you shall have the suffrage of the world. I remember an answer which when quite young I was prompted to make to a valued adviser, who was wont to importune me with the dear old doctrines of the church. On my saying, What have I to do with the sacredness of traditions, if I live wholly from within? my friend suggested,--"But these impulses may be from below, not from above." I replied, "They do not seem to me to be such; but if I am the Devil's child, I will live then from the Devil." No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature. Good and bad are but names very readily transferable to that or this; the only right is what is after my constitution, the only wrong what is against it. A man is to carry himself in the presence of all opposition as if everything were titular and ephemeral but he. I am ashamed to think how easily we capitulate to badges and names, to large societies and dead institutions. Every decent and well-spoken individual affects and sways me more than is right. I ought to go upright and vital, and speak the rude truth in all ways. If malice and vanity wear the coat of philanthropy shall that pass? If an angry bigot assumes this bountiful cause of Abolition, and comes to me with his last news from Barbadoes why should I not say to him, "Go love thy infant; love thy wood-chopper; be good-natured and modest: have that grace; and never varnish your hard, uncharitable ambition with this incredible tenderness for black folk a thousand miles off. Thy love afar is spite at home." Rough and graceless would he such greeting, but truth is handsomer than the affectation of love. Your goodness must have some edge to it,-- else it is none. The doctrine of hatred must be preached as the counteraction of the doctrine of love when that pules and whines. I shun father and mother and wife and brother, when my genius calls me. I would write on the lintels of the door-post, Whim. I hope it is somewhat better than whim at last, but we cannot spend the day in explanation. Expect me not to show cause why I seek or why I exclude company. Then again, do not tell me, as a good man did today, of my obligation to put all poor men in good situations. Are they my poor? I tell thee, thou foolish philanthropists that I grudge the dollar, the dime, the cent I give to such men as do not belong to me and to whom I do not belong. There is a class of persons to whom by all spiritual affinity I am bought and sold; for them I will go to prisons if need be; but your miscellaneous popular charities; the education at college of fools; the building of meeting-houses to the vain end to which many now stand; alms to sots; and the thousandfold Relief Societies;--though I confess with shame I sometimes succumb and give the dollar, it is a wicked dollar, which by and by I shall have the manhood to withhold. Virtues are, in the popular estimate, rather the exception than the rule. There is the man and his virtues. Men do what is called a good action, as some piece of courage or charity, much as they would pay a fine in expiation of daily nonappearance on parade. Their works arc done as an apology or extenuation of their living in the world,--as invalids and the insane pay a high board. Their virtues are penances. I do not wish to expiate, but to live. My life is for itself and not for a spectacle. I much prefer that it should be of a lower strain, so it be genuine and equal, than that it should be glittering and unsteady. I wish it to be sound and sweet, and not to need diet and bleeding. I ask primary evidence that you are a man, and refuse this appeal from the man to his actions. I know that for myself it makes no difference whether I do or forbear those actions which are reckoned excellent. I cannot consent to pay for a privilege where I have intrinsic right. Few and mean as my gifts may be, I actually am, and do not need for my own assurance or the assurance of my fellows any secondary testimony. What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think. This rule, equally arduous in actual and in intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness. It is the harder, because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it. It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.

zhengchangdianUID: 2563082

from domudomu:

I read the other day some verses（诗节） written by an eminent（知名的，良好品质的） painter which were original and not conventional. The soul always hears an admonition（告诫，轻责） in such lines, let the subject be what it may. The sentiment（伤感，柔情，态度） they instill is of more value than any thought they may contain. To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men,--that is genius. Speak your latent（潜在的，隐藏的） conviction, and it shall be the universal sense; for the inmost in due time becomes the outmost,--and our first thought is rendered back to us by the trumpets（喇叭，鼓吹） of the Last Judgment. Familiar as the voice of the mind is to each, the highest merit we ascribe to Moses（摩西）, Plato(柏拉图), and Milton（米尔顿） is that they set at naught（零） books and traditions, and spoke not what men, but what they thought. A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the luster of the firmament（苍穹） of bards（游吟诗人） and sages（圣人）. Yet he dismisses without notice his thought, because it is his. In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts: they come back to us with a certain alienated（感到孤独的） majesty. Great works of art have no more affecting lesson for US than this. They teach us to abide by our spontaneous impression with good-humored inflexibility then most when the whole Cry of voices is on the other side. Else, to-morrow a stranger will say with masterly good sense precisely what we have thought and felt all the time, and we shall be forced to take with shame our own opinion from another.
（前人如Plato之所以伟大是因为他们说的是自己的思想，而不是other man。所以人要说出自己的想法，才能成功。当然，艺术可以使你产生original impression）



There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better for worse as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel（核，重点，核心） of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil（长时间，低报酬） bestowed（赠给，授予） on that plot of ground which is given to him to till. The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried. Not for nothing one face, one character, one fact makes much impression on him, and another none. This sculpture in the memory is not without preéstablishcd harmony. The eye was placed where one ray should fall, that it might testify of that particular ray. We but half express ourselves, and are ashamed of that divin（天赐，极好，预测） idea which each of us represents. It may be safely trusted as proportionate（成比例， 相称的） and of good issues, so it be faithfully imparted（通知，授予，赋予）, but God will not have his work made manifest（明显，清楚显露） by cowards. A man is relieved and gay when he has put his heart into his work and done his best; but what he has said or done otherwise shall give hint no peace. It is a deliverance which does not deliver. （这是一种不能兑现的解脱）In the attempt his genius deserts him; no muse befriends; no invention, no hope. Trust thyself: every heart vibrates（振动） to that iron string. Accept the place the divine providence has found for your the society of your contemporaries, the connection of events. Great men have always done so, and confided themselves childlike to the genius of their age, betraying their perception that the absolutely trustworthy was seated at their heart, working through their hands, predominating in all their being. And we are now men, and must accept in the highest mind the same transcendent（卓越的，至高无上的） destiny; and not minors and invalids in a protected corner, not cowards fleeing before a revolution, but guides, redeemers,（积分商户） and benefactors, obeying the Almighty（万能的，强大的） effort, and advancing on Chaos and the Dark.
（嫉妒是愚蠢的，模仿是自杀性的，当投入工作后，身心会有所解放，遵守强大的力量，并且在黑暗中前进）
What pretty oracles（圣的，权威） nature yields us on this text, in the face and behavior of children, babes, and even brutes（畜生）! That divided and rebel（反叛，反抗） mind, that distrust of a sentiment because our arithmetic has computed the strength and means opposed to our purpose, these have not. Their mind being whole, their eye is as yet unconquered, and when we look in their faces, we are disconcerted（不安，慌张，窘迫）. Infancy conforms to（遵循） nobody; all conform to it, so that one babe commonly makes four or five out of the adults who prattle（逗小孩，那样的说话) and play to it. So God has armed youth and puberty(青春期） and manhood no less with its own piquancy（痛快） and charm, and made it enviable and gracious and its claims not to be put by, if it will stand by itself. Do not think the youth has no force, because he cannot speak to you and me. Hark（听，重提）! in the next room his voice is sufficiently clear and emphatic. It seems he knows how to speak to his contemporaries. Bashful or bold, then, he will know how to make us seniors very unnecessary. The nonchalance（漠不关心） of boys who are sure of a dinner, and would disdain as much as a lord to do or say aught to conciliate one, is the healthy attitude of human nature. A boy is in the parlor（客厅） what the pit is in the playhouse; independent; irresponsible, looking out from his corner on such people and facts as pass by, he tries and sentences them on their merits, in the swift, summary ways of boys, as good, bad, interesting, silly, eloquent.（雄辩的，传神的） troublesome. He numbers himself never about consequences, about interests: he gives an independent, genuine verdict（裁决，意见）. You must court him: he does not court you.
（婴儿总是出人意料，不遵循常规，因此God给予年轻人力量这么做。）

But the man is, as it were, clapped into jail by his consciousness. As soon as he has once acted or spoken with éclat, he is a committed person, watched by the sympathy or the hatred of hundreds, whose affections must now enter into his account. There is no Lethe（遗忘，记忆缺失） for this. Ah, that he could pass again into his neutrality! Who can thus avoid all pledges, and having observed, observe again from the same unaffected, unbiased, unbribable（不可收买，不可贿赂）, unaffrighted innocence, must always be formidable. He would utter（说出） opinions on all passing affairs, which being seen to be not private, but necessary, would sink like darts into the ear of men, and put them in fear. These are the voices which we hear in solitude, but they grow faint and inaudible as we enter into the world. Society everywhere is in conspiracy（阴谋，密谋） against the manhood of every one of its members. Society is a joint-stock company, in which the members agree, for the better securing of his bread to each shareholder, to surrender the liberty and culture of the eater. The virtue in most request is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but names and customs. Whoso（不管是谁，无论是谁） would be a man, must be a nonconformist. He who would gather immortal palms must not he hindered by the name of goodness, but must explore if it he goodness. Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind. （除了你自身的正直，没有什么是神圣的）Absolve you to yourself, and you shall have the suffrage of the world.
（在这个复杂的社会，大人们的言行完全被别人看到。我就是我自己的神，在我活的地方）

I remember an answer which when quite young I was prompted to make to a valued adviser, who was wont to importune（纠缠，不断要求我） me with the dear old doctrines（教条） of the church. On my saying, What have I to do with the sacredness of traditions, if I live wholly from within? my friend suggested,--"But these impulses may be from below, not from above." I replied, "They do not seem to me to be such; but if I am the Devil's child, I will live then from the Devil." No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature. Good and bad are but names very readily transferable to that or this; the only right is what is after my constitution, the only wrong what is against it. （好的和坏的，是可以由着向那转变的，只有我遵守的是对的，而我反对的都是错的）A man is to carry himself in the presence of all opposition as if everything were titular and ephemeral（短暂的瞬间的） but he. I am ashamed to think how easily we capitulate（投降） to badges and names, to large societies and dead institutions. Every decent and well-spoken individual affects and sways me more than is right. I ought to go upright and vital, and speak the rude truth in all ways. If malice（恶意，蓄意害人） and vanity（自大，虚荣） wear the coat of philanthropy（博爱，慈善活动） shall that pass? If an angry bigot（心胸狭窄，有偏见的人） assumes this bountiful cause of Abolition, and comes to me with his last news from Barbadoes why should I not say to him, "Go love thy infant; love thy wood-chopper; be good-natured and modest: have that grace; and never varnish your hard, uncharitable（不厚道的） ambition with this incredible tenderness for black folk a thousand miles off. Thy love afar is spite at home." Rough and graceless would he such greeting, but truth is handsomer than the affectation of love. Your goodness must have some edge to it,-- else it is none. The doctrine of hatred must be preached（布道，宣讲） as the counteraction（反对，反抗行动） of the doctrine of love when that pules and whines. I shun（避开） father and mother and wife and brother, when my genius calls me. I would write on the lintels（过梁，楣） of the door-post, Whim.（一时兴起的，异想天开） I hope it is somewhat better than whim at last, but we cannot spend the day in explanation. Expect me not to show cause why I seek or why I exclude company. Then again, do not tell me, as a good man did today, of my obligation to put all poor men in good situations. Are they my poor? I tell thee, thou foolish philanthropists（慈善家） that I grudge（不满，怨恨） the dollar, the dime, the cent I give to such men as do not belong to me and to whom I do not belong. There is a class of persons to whom by all spiritual affinity I am bought and sold; for them I will go to prisons if need be; but your miscellaneous（不同种类，混杂的） popular charities; the education at college of fools; the building of meeting-houses to the vain end to which many now stand; alms to sots（酒鬼）; and the thousandfold Relief Societies;--though I confess with shame I sometimes succumb（不再抵抗，屈从） and give the dollar, it is a wicked dollar, which by and by I shall have the manhood to withhold. Virtues are, in the popular estimate, rather the exception than the rule. There is the man and his virtues. Men do what is called a good action, as some piece of courage or charity, much as they would pay a fine in expiation（赎罪，补偿） of daily nonappearance on parade. Their works arc done as an apology or extenuation（减轻罪孽的借口） of their living in the world,--as invalids and the insane pay a high board. Their virtues are penances. I do not wish to expiate, but to live. My life is for itself and not for a spectacle（悲壮的可笑的）. I much prefer that it should be of a lower strain, so it be genuine and equal, than that it should be glittering and unsteady. I wish it to be sound and sweet, and not to need diet and bleeding. I ask primary evidence that you are a man, and refuse this appeal from the man to his actions. I know that for myself it makes no difference whether I do or forbear those actions which are reckoned excellent. I cannot consent to pay for a privilege where I have intrinsic right. Few and mean as my gifts may be, I actually am, and do not need for my own assurance or the assurance of my fellows any secondary testimony. What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think. This rule, equally arduous（艰巨的） in actual and in intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness. It is the harder, because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it. It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude
（许多人认为人展现美德，做善事，是为了赎罪，但我认为一个人最成功的就是独立孤独地做他自己，又不得罪其他人）

zhengchangdianUID: 2563082

Comment:

Thie special article reminds me of the issues concerned about originality and creation. As the author has emphasized in his passage, no one can possibly achieve success in the world by conforming to conventional practices and conventional ways of thinking. The God has armed us human with the capacity to think independently only if we donot lose the courage to upset the tradition. Of course, perfection is the state that one conserves his independence and originality without offending others and the common rules.

On the other hand, to over-accentuate the significance of independece would drive one far from his destination. Originality does not mean thinking something that was never thought before; it means putting old ideas together in new ways. In other words, almost every great creation depends on the basic knowledge of the creator. No one is capable of shaking the yoke of his predecessors and creat out of nothing. For example, modern politics in the US can trace back to the foundation of democracy——the Declaration of Indepence.

In summary, what we need to do is to enrich our basic knowledge and practice our particular enlighted reflection in the field we love.