决战1010精英组Economist阅读汇——toywang分贴

toywangUID：2700880

先开一个贴，第一次做阅读贴。
文章定为economist debate里面的关于innovation方面的。
http://www.economist.com/debate/days/view/483

由于从头到位比较长，分为以下几个部分
background reading
opening statements
rebuttal statements
guest
closing statements
decision
文章下到word 里面，比较长
一周时间内，做好一部分，传一部分吧

toywangUID：2700880

Moon dreams

The Americans may still go to the moon before the Chinese

Feb 18th 2010 | From The Economist print edition

AP

Can you direct me to reception, please?

WHEN America’s space agency, NASA, announced its spending plans in February, some people worried that its cancellation of the Constellation moon programme had ended any hopes of Americans returning to the Earth’s rocky satellite. The next footprints on the lunar regolith表层 were therefore thought likely to be Chinese. Now, though, the private sector is arguing that the new spending plan actually makes it more likely America will return to the moon.

The new plan encourages firms to compete to provide transport to low Earth orbit (LEO). The budget proposes $6 billion over five years to spur the development of commercial crew全体船员 and cargo services to the international space station. This money will be spent on “man-rating” existing rockets, such as Boeing’s Atlas V, and on developing new spacecraft that could be launched on many different rockets. The point of all this activity is to create healthy private-sector competition for transport to the space station—and in doing so to drive down the cost of getting into space.用来递进的表达，

Eric Anderson, the boss of a space-travel company called Space Adventures, is optimistic about the changes. They will, he says, build “railroads into space”. Space Adventures has already sent seven people to the space station, using Russian rockets. It would certainly benefit from a new generation of cheap launchers.（先表明态度，optimistic about the change,再做解释）

Another potential beneficiary—and advocate G of private-sector transport—is Robert Bigelow后面是解释（这种句型比较好）, a wealthy entrepreneur who founded a hotel chain called Budget Suites of America. Mr Bigelow has so far spent $180m of his own money on space development—probably more than any other individual in history. He has been developing so-called expandable space habitats, a technology he bought from NASA a number of years ago.

These habitats, which are folded up for launch and then inflated in space, were designed as interplanetary 太阳系内的，行星间的vehicles for a trip to Mars, but they are also likely to be useful general-purpose accommodation. The company already has two scaled-down versions in orbit.

Mr Bigelow is preparing to build a space station that will offer cheap access to space to other governments—something he believes will generate a lot of interest. The current plan is to launch the first full-scale habitat (called Sundancer) in 2014. Further modules G will be added to this over the course of a year, and the result will be a space station with more usable volume 空间 （想到voluminous,长篇的）than the existing international one. Mr Bigelow’s price is just under $23m per astronaut. That is about half what Russia charges for a trip to the international station, a price that is likely to go up after the space shuttle retires later this year. 句型好并列句。He says he will be able to offer this price by bulk-buying launches on newly man-rated rockets. Since most of the cost of space travel is the launch, the price might come down even more if the private sector can lower the costs of getting into orbit.

The ultimate aim of all his investment, Mr Bigelow says, is to get to the moon. (在issue的论证中可以用：the ultimate aim of all his …..)LEO is merely his proving ground. He says that if the technology does work in orbit, the habitats will be ideal for building bases on the moon. To go there, however, he will have to prove that the expandable habitat does indeed work, and also generate substantial returns on his investment in LEO, to provide the necessary cash.

If all goes well, the next target will be L1, the point 85% of the way to the moon where the gravitational pulls of moon and Earth balance. “It’s a terrific dumping off point,”（excellent way to sell sth）
he says. “We could transport a completed lunar base [to L1] and put it down on the lunar surface intact未碰触的G.”

There are others with lunar ambitions, too. Some 20 teams are competing for the Google Lunar X Prize, a purse of $30m that will be given to the first private mission which lands a robot on the moon, travels across the surface and sends pictures back to Earth. Space Adventures, meanwhile, is in discussions with almost a dozen potential clients about a circumlunar mission, costing $100m a head.

The original Apollo project was mainly a race to prove the superiority of American capitalism over Soviet communism. Capitalism won—but at the cost of creating, in NASA, one of the largest bureaucracies in American history. If the United States is to return to the moon, it needs to do so in a way that is demonstrably superior to the first trip—for example, being led by business rather than government. Engaging in another government-driven spending battle, this time with the Chinese, will do nothing more than show that America has missed the point. 这种带插入语的句子，自己要写出来很难的，但很地道

toywangUID：2700880

把组里的朋友们做的阅读贴做一个连接。这样就可以学习别人的了

whiteout https://bbs.gter.net/bbs/thread-1081786-1-1.html PDF格式
weili0612 https://bbs.gter.net/bbs/viewthread.php?tid=1081461&extra
kingwyf87 https://bbs.gter.net/bbs/viewthread.php?tid=1081580&page=1&extra=
missingqiqi  https://bbs.gter.net/bbs/viewthread.php?tid=1081596&page=1#pid1773815710
huan19880122  https://bbs.gter.net/bbs/viewthread.php?tid=1081845&extra
橘子汁 https://bbs.gter.net/bbs/thread-1082345-1-1.html
cnycny  https://bbs.gter.net/bbs/viewthread.php?tid=1081533&page=1#pid1773815145
bridgerain  https://bbs.gter.net/bbs/viewthread.php?tid=1082095&page=1&extra
weasel   https://bbs.gter.net/bbs/thread-1082770-1-1.html
lynn  https://bbs.gter.net/bbs/viewthread.php?tid=1081482&page=1&extra=#pid1773814573
nanfeng  https://bbs.gter.net/bbs/thread-1082265-1-1.html
showkid  https://bbs.gter.net/bbs/thread-1082624-1-1.html
maggie  https://bbs.gter.net/bbs/viewthread.php?tid=1082643&pid=1773825371&page=1&extra=#pid1773825371
yuanlinqinggre  https://bbs.gter.net/bbs/viewthread.php?tid=1081668&extra=
zmssghh   https://bbs.gter.net/bbs/viewthread.php?tid=1081839&extra=
xingfuhbj   https://bbs.gter.net/bbs/viewthread.php?tid=1082213&extra

toywangUID：2700880

Climate-change politics

Cap-and-trade's last hurrah欢呼

The decline of a once wildly popular idea

Mar 18th 2010 | From The Economist print edition

Gaia （the primal Greek goddess of the Earth）大地之母
lent an unhelpful hand

IN THE 1990s cap-and-trade—the idea of reducing carbon-dioxide emissions by auctioning off拍卖a set number of pollution permits, which could then be traded in a market—was the darling of the green policy circuit. A similar approach to sulphur硫磺
dioxide emissions, introduced under the 1990 Clean Air Act, was credited with having helped solve acid-rain problems quickly and cheaply.
And its great advantage was that it hardly looked like a tax at all, though it would bring in a lot of money.可以用于论证长期和近期利益关系的论据和句子。

The cap-and-trade provision条款
expected in the climate legislation that Senators John Kerry, Joe Lieberman and Lindsey Graham have been working on, which may be unveiled shortly, will be a poor shadow of that once alluring[attractive] idea.评价性句子
Cap-and-trade will not be the centrepiece of the legislation (as it was of last year’s House climate bill, Waxman-Markey), but is instead likely to apply only to electrical utilities城市管理服务行业，公共工程, at least for the time being. Transport fuels will probably be approached with some sort of tax or fee; industrial emissions will be tackled with regulation and possibly, later on, carbon trading. The hope will be to cobble together cuts in emissions similar in scope to those foreseen under the House bill, in which the vast majority of domestic cuts in emissions came from utilities.

This composite复杂的 approach is necessary because the charms of economy-wide cap-and-trade have faded badly. The ability to raise money from industry is not so attractive in a downturn. Market mechanisms have lost their appeal as a result of the financial crisis. More generally递进 ,climate is not something the public seems to feel strongly about at the moment, in part because of that recession, in part perhaps because they have worries about the science (see article), in part, it appears, because the winter has been a snowy one. 言简意赅

The public is, though, quite keen on new initiatives on energy, which any Senate bill will shower with incentives刺激的，鼓励的 and subsidies补助金 whether the energy in question be renewable, nuclear, pumped out from beneath在…下面the seabed or still confined to research laboratories. So the bill will need to raise money, which is why cap-and-trade is likely to remain for the utilities, and revenues will be raised from transport fuels. A complex way of doing this, called a linked fee, would tie the revenues to the value of carbon in the utility market; a straightforward carbon tax may actually have a better chance of passing.

Energy bills have in the past garnered积累 bipartisan两党的
support, and this one also needs to. That is why Senator Graham matters. He could bring on board both Democrats and Republicans. Mr Graham’s contribution has been to focus the rhetoric言语，修辞 not just on near-term jobs, but also on longer-term competitiveness. Every day America does not have climate legislation, he argues, is a day that China’s grip on the global green economy gets tighter. 干嘛又怪中国，奇怪的老美

He also thinks action on the issue would be good for his party. While short-term Republican interests call for opposition, the party’s long-term interests must include broadening its support. 【把两党换成其他要讨论的，句式不错】Among young people, for example, polling suggests that the environment, and the climate, matter a great deal.

Unfortunately for this argument, tactics战略 matter, and young voters are unlikely to play a great role in the mid-term election. Other Republicans may think it better to wait before re-establishing the party’s green credentials国书，凭据. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, for example, is happy to talk about climate as a problem, and talks about the desirability of some sort of carbon restriction—perhaps a tax, or some version of Maria Cantwell’s “cap-and-dividend” scheme. But she expresses no great urgency about the subject. And she has introduced one of two measures intended to curtail the power the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) now has to regulate carbon, on the ground that that is a matter for legislation sometime in the future.

The EPA’s new powers undoubtedly make the charms of legislation greater. Some industrial lobbies may decide that the bill will provide the certainty they need to decide about future investment, and get behind it. The White House has been supportive of late, inviting senators over to talk. But it remains an uphill上坡的，艰难的struggle, and the use of reconciliation to pass health care could greatly increase the gradient倾斜度 of the hill, as Mr Graham has made abundantly clear.表达难度加大，暗喻用的很贴切

If the bill does not pass, it will change environmental politics in America and beyond. The large, comparatively business-friendly environmental groups that have been proponents支持者 of trading schemes will lose ground没有立足点, with organisations closer to the grassroots, and perhaps with a taste for civil disobedience, gaining power. Carbon-trading schemes elsewhere in the world have already been deprived of a vast new market—Waxman-Markey, now dead, would have seen a great many carbon credits bought in from overseas—and if America turned away from cap-and-trade altogether they would look even less transformative than they do today. And as market-based approaches lose relevance, what climate action continues may come to lean more heavily on the command-and-control techniques they were intended to replace.

文章的态度是表示怀疑和惋惜的。下面是对cap-and-trade 的介绍
美国总统奥巴马在近日提出的2010年度国家财政预算计划引来了诸多置疑。奥巴马的财政预算之所以备受争议，主要是因为他的计划中的两项提议将大大增加财政支出，而这很有可能带来巨额的财政赤字，使本已不乐观的财政状况雪上加霜。
请看外电的报道：
Obama's $3.6 trillion budget for the 2010 fiscal year beginning Oct. 1 contains ambitious programs to overhaul the US health care system and initiate new "cap-and-trade" rules to combat global warming.
奥巴马提出的3.6万亿美元2010财政年度预算中包括了他雄心勃勃的美国医疗整改项目和对抗全球变暖的“总量管制和交易”新规则的推行计划，2010财政年度将自10月1日起开始。
在上面的报道中，cap-and-trade rules指的就是“总量管制和交易”规则。所谓“总量管制和交易”，是指在限制温室气体排放总量的基础上，通过买卖行政许可的方式来进行排放。具体来说，就是美国等发达国家对于空气品质未达标准的污染源（这些污染源多分布在发展中国家），依照其空气品质改善目标配给“容许排放权”，并规范其逐年应削减的排放量比例、达成的目标年及最终容许排放权。各污染源取得容许排放权后，即能于开放性市场中自由进行交易买卖。这一机制为《京都议定书》首创，旨在通过对排放权的限制来减少碳排放量。
Cap这个词我们最熟悉的意思是“帽子”，而在cap-and-trade这个表达当中，cap表示the upper limit on what is allowed，即“（允许的）上限”，比如，“薪水上限”pay cap，“价格上限”price cap等。上面报道中提到的“限制温室气体排放总量”也就是to cap the emission of greenhouse gases或者greenhouse gas emission cap。

toywangUID：2700880

Genetically modified food

Attack of the really quite likeable tomatoes

The success of genetically modified crops provides opportunities to win over their critics

Feb 25th 2010 | From The Economist print edition

IN THE 14 years since the first genetically modified crops were planted commercially, their descendants, relatives and remixes have gone forth and multiplied like profitable, high-tech pondweed 一种水草水池草(泛指多种淡水植物,如眼子菜,鸭子草等). A new report (see article) shows that 25 countries now grow GM crops转基因作物, with the total area under cultivation now larger than Peru 秘鲁. Three-quarters of the farmland used to grow soya dadou is now sown with
播种a genetically modified variant, and the figures for cotton are not that far behind, thanks to its success in India. China recently gave the safety go-ahead to its first GM rice variety and a new GM maize 玉米 that should make better pig feed. More and more plants are having their genomes 基因组，染色体组sequenced: a full sequence for maize was published late last year, the soya genome in January. Techniques for altering genomes are moving ahead almost as fast as the genomes themselves are stacking up（加起来）, and new crops with more than one added trait 特点 are coming to market.

Such stories of success will strike fear into some hearts, and not only in GM-averse Europe; a GM backlash 对抗性反应 is under way in India, focused on insect-resistant aubergines 茄子？. Some of these fears are understandable, but lacking supporting evidence they have never been compelling强迫，胁迫. 句式很好
On safety, the fear which cuts closest to home, the record continues to look good. Governments need to keep testing and monitoring, but that may be becoming easier. More precise modifications, and better technologies for monitoring stray离散 DNA both within plants and in the environment around them, mean that it is getting easier to be sure that nothing untoward不顺利的 is going on.

Then there is the worry that GM crops are a way for big companies to take over the livelihoods生计 of small farmers and, in the end, a chunk of 一大块nature itself. Seen in this light the fact that 90% of the farmers growing GM crops are comparatively poor and in developing countries is sinister危险的, not salutary健康的; given Monsanto’s dominance in America’s soyabean market, it seems to suggest incipient 最开始的 world domination. It is certainly true that big firms make a lot of money selling GM seeds: the GM seed market was worth $10.5 billion in 2009, and the crops that grew from that seed were worth over $130 billion. But multinationals are not the only game in town这句话怎么理解呢？. The governments of China (which has increased agricultural research across the board), India and Brazil are also developing new GM crops. In 2009 a GM version of an Indian cotton variety, developed in the public sector, came to market, and a variety engineered by a private Indian firm has been approved for commercialization. Charities, such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, are also funding efforts in various countries to make crops more hardy or nutritious. GM seeds that come from government research bodies, or from local firms, may not arouse quite so much opposition as those from large foreign companies, especially when they provide characteristics that make crops better, not just easier to farm.

Moreover, where the seeds come from is a separate question from who should pay for them当讨论两个问题的地位的时候可以用, as Mr Gates points out. As with drugs and vaccines, it is possible to get products that were developed with profit in mind to the people who need them using donor money and clever pricing and licensing deals. In the longer term, if the seeds deliver what the farmers require, the need for such special measures should diminish. After all, the whole idea is not that poor farmers should go on being poor. It is that poor farmers should get a bit richer, be able to invest a bit more, and thus increase the food available to a growing and predominantly urban population.

More than strange fruits

There is another worry about GM technology, though, that should be taken seriously. 怎么样把插入语用的恰到好处？
It is that its success and appeal to technophiles may, in the minds of those who pay for agricultural research, crowd out other approaches to improving farming. Because it depends on intellectual property知识产权 that can be protected, GM is ripe for private investment. There is a lot of other agricultural research that is less amenable服从 to corporate ownership but still needs doing. From soil management to weather forecasts to the preservation, study and use of agricultural biodiversity, there are many ways to improve the agricultural systems on which the world’s food supply depends, and make them more resilient 有弹性的 as well as more profitable. A farm is not a just a clever crop: it is an ecosystem managed with intelligence. GM crops have a great role to play in that development, but they are only a part of the whole.

GM全称：Genetically Modified E.G转基因食品：genetically modified food 基因转换技术

toywangUID：2700880

China's currency

Bending, not bowing

The Chinese case for a stronger, suppler currency

Apr 7th 2010 | HONG KONG | From The Economist print edition

CHINA’S trade with America is notoriously臭名昭著的 skewed倾斜的. But diplomatic exchanges between the two countries are more finely balanced. On April 3rd Tim Geithner, America’s treasury secretary, tactfully老练的 postponed a report due this month that might have condemned China for manipulating its currency, keeping it weak to favour its exporters. Mr Geithner, who made an unscheduled trip to Beijing this week, said he would rather press America’s case at its regular “Strategic and Economic Dialogue” with China in May and at the G20 summit in Canada in June. The delay puts America’s diplomatic account with China briefly in surplus 剩余. What will China offer to clear the balance?

The immediate quid pro quo is the presence of China’s president, Hu Jintao, at a summit on nuclear proliferation 细胞分裂繁殖 in Washington, DC, on April 12th-13th. There is also talk of allowing the yuan to wobble 摇摆 a little more in daily trading with the dollar. In time it is expected to resume the slow crawl upwards 这是第二次遇到这样的表达了that ended in July 2008.

America’s Treasury is willing to bide its time. But its patience is not shared by members of Congress. Last month 130 of them wrote to Mr Geithner urging tougher action against China. After the currency report was postponed, Chuck Schumer, a New York senator, said he would push his bill to slap 还击 anti-dumping 反倾销 duties on some Chinese goods and countervailing tariffs on all of them if China does not allow its currency to strengthen. 在全球化过程中遇到的贸易纠纷的例子

The tussle 争论 in America between a cautious Treasury and slap-happy senators is mirrored by subtle divisions within China. Its policymakers and economists are, of course, united in their distaste for America’s tariff-talk. Many can scarcely believe that a country so indebted to China would try to intimidate恫吓 it. (Mr Schumer points out that if the Chinese were to dump their dollar holdings, they would only depress their value, thereby “cutting off their nose to spite their face”.) But the noisy dispute between the two countries is drowning out an interesting debate within China on the virtues of their inflexible currency.

On one side of the discussion is the People’s Bank of China (PBOC), the country’s central bank. Its chairman, Zhou Xiaochuan, suggested last month that keeping the yuan stable against the dollar保持人名币的坚挺was a crisis measure, which would be withdrawn “sooner or later”. With China’s recovery well advanced, the central bank is keen to get a grip on bank lending and keep a lid on inflationary pressures. A stronger yuan would cut import prices; a suppler one would give the central bank a freer hand to raise interest rates, without worrying about the capital inflows such rates might attract despite China’s capital controls.

On the other side of the debate is China’s Commerce Ministry and some members of its National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC),商务部和国家发改委 which formulates the country’s long-term economic strategy. Beyond the PBOC, Chinese policymakers do not see the yuan as a tool to manage inflation. They see it instead as a “tool” to “maximise export employment”, says Stephen Green of Standard Chartered Bank. And it is a tool they are not yet ready to relinquish废除. Although China’s output grew by over 10% in the year to the fourth quarter, its policymakers believe they have done a better job of shoring up GDP than of shoring up employment, according to Eswar Prasad of the Brookings Institution, a think-tank. The World Bank says that rural wages (outside farms) fell by a fifth between 2007 and 2009 as migrant workers fled back to their villages in search of jobs.

What accounts for this jobless recovery? Much of China’s epic
stimulus was channelled through its banks. But in doling out credit Chinese banks still follow a “political pecking order”, as Yasheng Huang of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has put it. They reserve the first and biggest bites for large state-owned enterprises. These firms in turn favour capital-intensive investment projects, which add more to the output figures than to the payrolls. As a result China’s policymakers still count on the country’s exporters to create jobs, Mr Prasad argues. They are reluctant不情愿的 to do anything to jeopardize 使。。。陷入危险 their prospects.

How much damage might a stronger yuan inflict? Several studies suggest that China’s exports fall by about 1.5% when its trade-weighted exchange rate, adjusted for inflation, strengthens by 1%. 用作例子But if the yuan did move against the dollar, the currencies of China’s neighbours and rivals might rise in sympathy, limiting the damage to its competitiveness. And China’s coastal workshops have staged an impressive recovery from the worst days of the crisis, when factories closed and container ships idled闲置 in the ports. Exports in February were 8% higher than two years earlier. A few more months of robust figures may reassure policymakers that the country’s exporters are back on their feet.

Some of China’s rulers, it is true, see no benefit to China from a stronger yuan. But they are also the ones most determined to resist foreign pressure. They would, therefore, back down only if American tariffs inflicted real pain. And theirs are not the only voices in the government. The PBOC recently appointed three scholars to advise it, two of whom, David Daokui Li and Xia Bin, have advocated currency reform. Whether they can overcome the Commerce Ministry and its allies remains to be seen. But their efforts to sell their ideas will come to nought （=nothing） if they are crowded out by imported arguments from America.

西方媒体对人名币升值施压以及分析。国内外媒体是服务于不同的政治媒体，因而立场也大相径庭

maggie-jiangUID：2666877

大爱。。。怎么做的啊。。。学习一下，↖(^ω^)↗ 3# toywang

toywangUID：2700880

The moderator's opening remarks
Mar 22nd 2010 | Mr Vijay V. Vaitheeswaran

What is the right role for government in spurring innovation? The outlines of this age-old debate will be familiar to many. One side argues that governments inevitably不可避免的 get it wrong when they get too involved in innovation: picking the wrong technology winners, say, or ploughing subsidies 发放补助金 into politically popular projects rather than the most deserving ones. The other rebuts反驳 that given the grave global challenges we face today—in the 1960s America thought it was the Soviet race into space, today many countries worry about climate change and pandemic 全国流感threats—governments need to do much more to support innovation.通过对比来论证，时代不同了。作为例证
Happily for us, gentle reader, the two sides in the Economist's latest debate are moving beyond such platitudes 陈词滥调 to novel 革新arguments.Arguing in favour of the motion that innovation works best when government does least is Amar Bhide, a professor at Harvard and author of "The Venturesome Economy". 句式很好His opening statement roundly denounces the visions of home-grown Silicon Valleys that dance in the heads of bureaucrats worldwide as "a dubious conception of paradise".例子California's bloated government is bankrupt and Japan's once formidable MITI agency is in tatters破碎了, he observes, but market-minded Hong Kong is flourishing (and its hyper-commercial denizens far richer than their coddled Japanese counterparts).
He adds for good measure that the "techno-fetishist" 技术崇拜者view of innovation represented by the top-heavy Japanese model pales in comparison with arobust, bottom-up
强大的自上而下的version of innovation that harnesses the creativity and enterprise of the many, including the "venturesome consumers".这句话有点难理解 He does acknowledge that governments have a role to play: "Doing the least doesn't mean doing nothing at all." However, his advocacy of a least is best policy, though conceptually elegant, seems a bit slippery and is probably unhelpful in practice. In future postings记录, perhaps he will explain how exactly governments should decide whether they are doing too little or too much to help innovation.
David Sandalow, author of "Freedom from Oil" and a senior official in America's Department of Energy, presents a robust defence of government. He does make the familiar points about the need for governments to invest in education and fundamental research. He also adds slightly more controversial arguments about why government policies are required to overcome market failures (such as the recent financial crisis, which unfairly sapped innovators of credit) and misaligned incentives that hold back the adoption of worthwhile innovations (like energy-saving technologies with speedy paybacks).
More striking is Mr Sandalow's linkage （=connect）of the global trend towards open innovation, which means companies increasingly rely on ideas from outside their own research laboratories, with the need for greater government spending on innovation.例子He argues that open innovation will get technologies faster to market, but at the expense of fundamental research of the sort that AT&T Bell Labs or Xerox Parc 两公司的科研部used to do. He insists that "without government support for such research, the seed corn for future generations would be at risk". That is a clever point, but it does not answer the obvious rebuttal that governments would inevitably invest in the wrong sorts of research (think, to stick with his analogy, of the money spent by the American government subsidising corn ethanol, an environmentally questionable but politically popular fuel).
Are you waiting for further rounds of jousting to decide which side to support? Don't be a mugwump, sitting on the fence with your mug in one hand and your wump on the other. Cast your vote now.

toywangUID：2700880

紫色：例子
绿色：好的表达和句型
红色：生词
Innovation now attracts innumerable worshippers but their prayers are often quite narrow and sectarian 宗派心强的. Silicon Valley or possibly the Israeli high-tech industry is the promised land: a wondrous 令人惊奇的combination of private high-tech enterprise underpinned
（=supported）by government-financed universities and research labs.
This is, alas, a
dubious 含糊的conception of paradise. For all the high-tech prowess of Silicon Valley, the economy of California is on the edge of disaster. Unemployment in eight counties now tops 20% and the government pays its bills in IOUs. And in spite of its extraordinary concentration of scientific and engineering talent and entrepreneurship, Israel's GDP per head in 2009 was lower than of Cyprus, Greece and Slovenia.
Or remember Japan's omnipotent
, visionary MITI working hand and glove with the likes of NEC, Hitachi and Fujitsu? Put aside fiascos such as the ten-year Fifth Generation Computer Systems Project, by standard measures the overall level of Japanese engineering and scientific performance, either because of or in spite of government subsidies, is impressive. More tellingly, Hong Kong's GNP per head is nearly 30% higher than Japan's, 24% higher than Germany's and 505% higher than Israel's. Yet Hong Kong's government and private businesses pay scant attention to cutting-edge scientific and technological research.
The techno-fetishist view of innovation and the kind of government support it demands fails to appreciate the enormous variety of innovations that we need.
The measure of a good economy lies in the satisfaction it provides to the many, not a few, not in the wealth or accomplishment of a few individuals or organisations.
(可以用于论证issue中小环境和大环境的对比话题中)And these satisfactions go beyond the material or pecuniary rewards earned: they include, for instance, the exhilaration 兴奋of overcoming challenges. Indeed they go hand in hand: a good economy cannot provide widespread prosperity without harnessing the creativity and enterprise of the many.

有效论证了经济和智慧都是不可缺的All must have the opportunity to innovate, to try out new things: not just scientists and engineers but also graphic artists, shopfloor workers, salespersons and advertising agencies; not just the developers of new products but their venturesome consumers. The exceptional performance of a few high-tech businesses, as the Silicon Valley and Israeli examples show, is just not enough.
This widely diffused散布的, multifaceted form of innovation entails a circumscribed role for governments: they should not to put their finger on the scale bribing people to do basic research instead of, say, the kind of graphics design that has made Apple such an iconic company. Mandating 命令more math and science in high schools when most of us never use trigonometry 三角学or calculus in our working lives takes away time from learning skills that are crucial in an innovative economy: how to listen and persuade, think independently and work collaboratively, for instance.
Yes, there is a problem with global warming, but that is best solved by innumerable tinkerers 打杂工的taking their chances with renewable energy and resourceful conservation, not by throwing money at projects that a few savants have determined to be the most promising. 一个长句The apparent duplication 双重of autonomous 自主的initiative isn't a waste: no one can foretell what is going to work. Even the most successful venture-capital companies have more misses than hits. Therefore putting many independent experiments in play raises the odds that one will work. When government gets into the game of placing bets, for instance, on new battery technologies, innovators who don't have the savvy, credentials and connections with politicians or the scientific establishment are at a severe disadvantage.例子 Yet history shows that it is often the nonconformist 不信教的outsiders who play a pivotal 中枢的role. Would Ed Roberts have been able to secure a government grant to build the world's first personal computer, a virtually useless toy when it was introduced in 1974?好例子
Of course a government doing the least doesn't mean a government doing nothing at all. Moreover, the least is a moving and ever expanding target. The invention of the automobile, for example, necessitated driving rules and a system of vehicle inspections. The growth of air travel required a system to control traffic and certify the airworthiness of aircraft. Similarly, radio and television required a system to regulate the use of the airwaves.Issue中典型的段落写法，TS加例子来支撑
Modern technology created new forms of pollution that did not exist in agrarian 农耕的economies. Governments had to step in, in one way or the other, to make it unrewarding to pollute. Likewise, antitrust 反垄断laws to control commercial interactions and conduct emerged after new technologies created opportunities to realise economies of scale and scope—and realise oligopoly 商品供应垄断or monopoly profits. These opportunities were largely absent in pre-industrial economies.
But the principle of the least is best remains a true compass. New technologies not only create the need for desirable new rules, they but also generate more opportunities for unwarranted meddling and a cover for rent-seeking. It is one thing for the Federal Aviation Administration to manage the air traffic control system, quite another for the Civil Aeronautics Board (b. 1938, d. 1985) to regulate airfares, routes and schedules. The construction of the interstate highway system may have been a great boon to the US economy, for example, but it did not take long for Congress to start appropriating funds for bridges to nowhere.
Entrepreneurial leaps into the dark are best sustained by great caution in expanding the scope of government intervention; the private virtue of daring can be a public vice. The US chief justice has often repeated the maxim: "If it is not necessary to decide an issue to resolve a case, then it is necessary not to decide that issue."
Similarly, if it is not necessary to intervene 介入to promote innovation, it should be considered necessary not to intervene. The government should focus on things that private enterprise simply cannot provide and stay away from promoting activities that would allegedly be undersupplied. If nothing, this maxim frees up resources for crucial public goods. So traffic police, emission rules and carbon taxes: absolutely.

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Governments spur innovation. Governments shape innovation. Many of the most important innovations in recent decades grew from the work of governments.
例子来啦
In 1965, a US government employee named Bob Taylor had an idea about how computers could communicate. He took the idea to his boss Charles Herzfeld, head of the Pentagon's Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), who invested government funds in exploring it. That investment led to the ARPAnet and, in turn, to the internet, without which so many things (including this online debate) would not be possible.
An isolated example? Hardly. Among the innovations that grew directly from government funding are the Google search engine, GPS devices, DNA mapping, inexpensive mass data storage and even Teflon.

Why is government important to innovation?开始阐释二者关系
First, because the private sector underinvests in fundamental research. That is natural. Time horizons in many businesses are short. Few companies are in a position to capture benefits from fundamental research they might fund on their own. In many fields, fundamental research requires resources available only to governments and the largest companies. As Professor Henry Chesbrough documents in his book "Open Innovation", the big corporate research labs of decades past have given way to more distributed approaches to innovation. That gets many technologies to market faster, but at the expense of fundamental research. Without government support for such research, the seed corn for future generations would be at risk.
Second, because innovation depends on an educated workforce, which is a job for governments. Biomedical research requires medical technicians. Energy research requires engineers. Computer research requires programmers. 先是提出了需要educated workforce ，接着例举了不同领域的具体workforce。Although private companies often provide specialised training, an educated workforce is the essential starting point. Primary and secondary education is a vital precursor to much innovation. That is a job for governments everywhere. And universities play a central role, with training of promising young innovators often made possible by government funding.
Third, because market failures stifle innovative technologies. The recent financial crisis choked off capital for innovators. Without governments stepping in to provide backstop 有保障的support, thousands of promising innovations would have been lost due to the unrelated vagaries of failing financial markets. There are many other examples. Lack of capital and information prevents homeowners from investing in energy-saving technologies with very short payback periods. Split incentives between architects, builders, landlords and tenants prevent widespread adoption of similar technologies in commercial buildings. Governments have a central role in overcoming these barriers, and more.
Fourth, because government policies and standards can lay a strong foundation for innovation. Last century, the United States benefited from government policies requiring near universal access to electricity and telephone services, laying the groundwork for a vibrant consumer electronics industry. 政府对科研的好处的好例子This century, Finland and Korea (among others) are benefiting from government policies to promote broadband access, helping position each country for global leadership in a vast global market. New technologies require standards that allow them to operate within larger systems. The NTSC television broadcast standard, 110V AC current and FHA housing loans, to pick just three examples, each helped market actors coordinate, encouraging innovation. Or consider Israel, which has a teeming innovation culture in which the Israeli government plays a central role, providing the foundation for startups that commercialise civilian uses of military technologies in materials, semiconductors, medical devices and communications.
Finally, because governments help make sure innovation delivers public benefits. Not all innovation is good. Collateralised debt obligations were an important financial innovation. Yet as the recent financial crisis demonstrated, financial markets cannot be relied upon to self-regulate innovation. As government encourages and promotes innovation, it also has a role in guiding it.
In the academic literature on innovation, the number of patents issued in a country is often used as a proxy代理 for the rate of innovation. Patents are, of course, issued by governments. As this suggests, governments play a central role in innovation.
In his inaugural address就职演说, President Obama said, "The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works…" That should guide us in thinking about this motion. The notion that "Innovation works best when government does least" is simplistic and wrong. There may be instances in which government meddling chokes off innovation. (Past US government restrictions on stem cell research come to mind.) Yet governments can and do play a central role in spurring innovation and making sure innovation delivers benefits. We should embrace government's role in innovation, always seeking to refine and improve it, not diminish it with broad generalities.
这篇文章中的很多例子可以别下来，用在关于innovation的issue的题目中，尤其是最后一段中引用的obama的话，这句话同样可以用于government function的讨论中。
但也有一个问题，虽然文章的脉络结构很简单，但是应用于issue中可能不适合吧。

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好久没来啦，加紧哦~~

Flash in the pan

As Apple flexes its mobile muscles【显示力量】, it is changing the appearance of video on the web

Apr 16th 2010 | From The Economist online

GIVE Steve Jobs his due. 【和Steve Jobs的预想一样】Apple’s charismatic 【有魅力的】boss is, without question, the most strategic thinker in the business. He appreciates better than anyone that computing is in transition. As it evolves 【发展为】from being predominantly a stationary activity to becoming increasingly (exclusively?) a mobile one, the roles of the industry’s leading participants are changing fast.

很好的句式， evolves from doing sth to doing sth

When Microsoft ruled the realm of personal computers, Apple was little more than a niche player. But in mobile phones, Microsoft is the one left scrambling 【攀爬】 for a piece of the action. And although Google may own 65% of the search business on the desktop, the 85m wireless devices Apple has sold (iPhones, iPods and now iPads) account for 64% of America’s mobile browsing, Mr Jobs said this month.

The success of Apple’s mobile devices gives the firm an opportunity to capture【好词，比用play，account 都好】 a goodly chunk of the emerging mobile-advertising market. Indeed, that is the reason why Apple recently acquired Quattro Wireless, a mobile advertising agency. Becoming an advertising powerhouse【one having great power】 is certainly attractive. But Mr Jobs has far bigger fish to fry. The biggest of them all is turning Apple into the Microsoft of mobility. But first there is a little matter of locking as many software developers as possible into the Apple ecosystem. 人才战略If the applications are there, so the argument goes, users will follow in droves【成群结队】.

It has been done before. What gave Microsoft the keys to the kingdom was partly the way it embraced an open platform based on the Intel processor plus slots for other manufacturers’ components to plug into. Even more important, though, was the vast number of applications written by independent programmers that worked exclusively with Microsoft’s operating systems.

Mr Jobs has no intention of ever opening Apple’s hardware for others to mess with. But software that meets a minimum standard is a different matter. At the last count, the App Store (Apple’s online outlet for iPhone software) listed 185,000 applications for users to choose from. So far, some 4 billion software utilities, games, maps and music tracks have been downloaded by owners of iPhones, iPods and lately iPads—all of which share the same operating system and can therefore use many of the same applications. The App Store offers Mr Jobs his best chance yet of creating a global franchise on a par with 【与。。。等价的】Microsoft’s Windows. From Apple’s perspective【可以代替aspect，point of view，standpoint】, the last thing it should therefore do is allow that unique source of customer satisfaction to be threatened in any way.

No surprise, then, that Mr Jobs has banned programmers from writing iPhone apps【自动化应用程序】 using cross-platform programming tools like Adobe’s Flash and Microsoft’s .NET, which make it easy to write an app for many different devices and operating systems at once. Flash plug-ins, running inside web browsers, can be found in Macintosh computers, but in none of Apple’s mobile toys.

Were Flash ever to find its way in through the back door to the iPhone operating system, Apple’s armlock on its customers would be severely weakened. If most apps are built to run on Android and BlackBerry phones, as well as iPhones, then Apple would lose the advantage of being able to offer the widest choice of apps. With all smart phones able to do similar tricks these days, there would be less compulsion to buy an iPhone in the first place.

But there is a big problem with banning Flash: without it, people cannot play most of the videos, animation and games encoded on websites using the industry’s most popular tool. Adobe’s Flash software powers the vast majority of multimedia clips seen on the web—from YouTube videos to the simplest animated chart or advertisement. Apple’s devices include software that can play YouTube videos when needed. But apart from that they are incompatible 【两难的，矛盾的】with content built in Flash. (Bad luck, Farmville fans.)

Still, Mr Jobs remains adamant【坚定地，坚决的】. In his view, Flash is a rat’s nest of buggy software that hogs processor cycles, drains battery life and causes needless crashes. 【jobs的理由】That is why he has just blocked an end-run Adobe was planning around his ban on mobile Flash. Henceforth,【这个递进关系的词很好】 developers creating applications for the iPhone and its ilk will have to sign a revised agreement that forbids them from using any programming tools other than Apple’s approved set.

The move was prompted by the arrival of Adobe’s latest programming aid, Flash Pro CS 5. This threatened to turn Flash applications of the kind seen on the web into stand-alone iPhone apps capable of slipping onto the App Store undetected. Adobe even boasted—rather rashly, as it turned out—that over 100 such programs had already done just that.

Does Apple’s latest clamp down
【压制】on Flash mean that people who have bought iPhones, iPods and iPads are now stuck with a crippled version of the web? For the time being, yes—though there are partial workarounds that might yet help. Eventually, though, a technology known as HTML5, which has been in the works for the past six years, promises to render Flash largely irrelevant. Among other things, the attraction of HTML5 is that it is designed to handle audio and video internally, without the need for browser plug-ins such as Adobe’s Flash (or others like Microsoft’s Silverlight and Oracle’s JavaFX).

Unfortunately, HTML5 remains a work in progress. Where, today, Flash can seamlessly【无处不在的】 handle a variety of “codecs” for compressing and decompressing【压缩和解压】 the video’s data stream between the web server and the viewer, HTML5 is experimenting with two distinctly different codecs for video playback: one, called H.264, is used in Apple’s Safari and Microsoft’s forthcoming IE9 browsers, while the other, known as Ogg Theora, has been adopted by the Firefox and Opera browsers; Google’s Chrome has embraced both.

Experts agree that the H.264 algorithm produces a superior picture, but it is a proprietary technology—though free to license, at least for the time being. For internet purists, Ogg Theora’s attraction is that it is open source. A religious war has broken out between the two camps over which codec to standardise on.

The good news is that a solution may yet be in sight. By all accounts, Google is poised to open-source its highly regarded VP8 video codec. The search giant has hinted as much ever since acquiring the codec’s maker, On2 Technologies, earlier this year. Insiders reckon VP8 uses only half the bandwidth of H.264 while delivering an even better picture. Mozilla, the open-source organisation behind Firefox, would welcome VP8 into the fold.

But would Apple, after having backed H.264 so enthusiastically? If it promised a quick and certain death for Flash, Mr Jobs would doubtless be delighted to go along. For deprived iPhone users, the crippled web might then be a thing of the past.

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用上一篇做的comment
第一次做，有人看到可以拍拍我的。
Comment：
After reading this article, there raised many doubts in my mind, then, I find some information about Steve Jobs. He is an outstanding person who wants to handle everything clearly. Apart from the comment in internet, only through this article, there still exists more business benefits behind Mr. Jobs’ action. If Flash can be used in his mobile applicants, Apple will lose many customs who buy games in his store, that will influence the income of Apple and even do harm to the financial turnover. From the perspective of Adobe, this company will take some action to strike back or have a peaceful connection with Apple, caused they cannot deny the function of synergy .

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那么多eco都欠着啦，五一补齐来

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The moderator's rebuttal remarks
Mar 24th 2010 | Mr Vijay V. Vaitheeswaran

Our online debate on the role of government in fostering 【培育，扶植】innovation is off to a fiery 【热烈的】start. Both sides are now offering their rebuttals, and, despite minor gestures of conciliation, it is clear that neither debater is really willing to concede much ground.彼此认同
Amar Bhidé, arguing in favour of the proposition, takes on the favourite example offered up in defence of government funding of innovation: the creation of ARPAnet, the precursor【先驱】 to today's internet. Yes, he accepts, government funding did play an essential role in this example. But he then points to Minitel, a French government network that also had grand ambitions, cost billions but ultimately proved a turkey【failed】. Indeed, it held France back from 【阻止，抑制】embracing the internet, the obvious winner of that technology race. "Should we have a few decision makers with no skin in the game placing bets on their favoured technologies rather than many independent innovators staking their time and money?", he asks.这句可以换成陈述句在段位引用
ARPA是互联网的先驱，虽然是政府资助的，但是结果并未取得预期成绩
Arguing against the proposition, David Sandalow offers a robust defence of government's role in fostering innovation. It is not only classical governmental functions such as patent protection, education and basic research that he defends. He takes on the charge that government must not pick technology winners, insisting that the American government's efforts to spur investments in battery technology are justified in part because of the externalities associated with energy use are not recognised by the market framework. Not only is government intervention required to internalise those social costs, he insists, but only can the wise hand of the state "guide innovation toward socially beneficial purposes".
The battle lines are drawn. Our combatants are intellectually clear on their differences, and not afraid to attack the other side's weaknesses. Which side do you believe has the upper hand? Cast your vote now.

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The proposer's rebuttal remarks
Mar 24th 2010 | Amar Bhidé

Mr Sandalow's assertion that Google's search engine "grew directly from government funding" is puzzling【迷惑的】. I was once a satisfied user of Alta Vista search. In 1999 I switched to Google mainly because its interface was much cleaner and to some degree its results were better related to my queries. In what way did the government fund the idea of the cleaner interface? And as my friend Jim Manzi, a contributing editor at National Review, and a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute puts it, which Federal Department of Critical Insight caused Google co-founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin to think about the "page rank" algorithm【【数学】算法；规则系统；演段。】?
The Google case in fact
underlines【可以替换show啊等】 the importance of decentralized【分散的】 innovation that is not directed by the government.
Alta Vista was on the surface a perfectly satisfactory search engine. Two graduate students figured out on their own how to make it better in aesthetic and non-technical ways without having to curry favour with funding agencies.
Mr Sandalow is on firmer ground in pointing out that the internet evolved from the Pentagon-funded ARPAnet. But think of France's grand Minitel scheme. Starting in 1982, the state-owned telephone company gave away millions of free Minitel terminals, which could be used to make online purchases and train reservations, trade stocks, look up phone numbers and chat. Just like the internet. Except it wasn't quite as good or versatile. Worse,【用来表示递进很好】 Minitel held back the adoption of the internet and France's entry into the information age, as Lionel Jospin, French prime minister, pointed out in 1997. Yet by then Minitel had acquired a life of its own: in 2000 France Telecom poured money as never before into a publicity campaign to promote a service widely recognised to be obsolete.
What accounts for the difference between the success of the internet and the failure of Minitel? 【用来表明两种事物之间的差异】It seems unlikely that it is because the French are worse at managing large publicly funded projects. Compared with the Train à Grande Vitesse (TGV), Amtrak's Acela is a bad dream.
It could be bad luck, since all innovative projects are a gamble【赌注】. But then do we want the government to be gambling with taxpayers' money? Should we have a few decision-makers with no skin in the game placing bets on their favoured technologies rather than many independent innovators staking their time and money on a chance that their offering will beat the status quo?
The difference between ARPAnet's and Minitel's ambitions also is noteworthy【显著的】. ARPAnet was not a grandiose【只有多了这些生动的形容词才有感觉】 scheme to create a ubiquitous 【无处不在的】national network. Rather the project involved a small number of players and was undertaken to advance the Pentagon's mission. Very likely this helped limit the risks of overreach.
Now of course the Pentagon's mission of
ensuring national security is vital and cannot be outsourced to private enterprise. And technology is a paramount ingredient of modern defence. It is inevitable, therefore, that the Pentagon is an important high-tech buyer and (like any large customer) helps shape the new technologies it wants. Which is as it should be, and not at all inconsistent with the principle of limited government.句型很好
Conversely debacles like Minitel are likely to occur when governmental bodies go beyond their assigned, essential roles.
And although ARPAnet's contribution was valuable, it is far from certain that without Pentagon funding, there would have been no internet. 用于让步的句式The telephone network was in its time every bit as revolutionary. Yet Alexander Bell invented the telephone and Theodore Vail created a nearly universal nationwide network with no military or other developmental grants. Similarly Thomas Edison became the most prodigious 【庞大的
这个词形容edison太经典了】inventor in American history without a receiving penny in research subsidies.例子很好
History also shows that unlike say national defence or air traffic control, a significant governmental role is not essential even for fundamental research. 通过这句话就是说下面要有history 来说事~~~Revolutionary advances occurred even when government funding for scientific research was minimal. Darwin's research on evolution, Michael Faraday's work on electromagnetism and electro-chemistry, Newton's discoveries of calculus and the laws of motion 【这些例子一出来，就不一样了】were all done without government grants. In 1905 Albert Einstein produced four path-breaking papers—on the photoelectric effect, Brownian motion, special relativity and the equivalence of matter and energy—while employed as an examiner at the Swiss patent office.
A common argument made in favour of government subsidies for fundamental research is that contributions that the likes or Darwin, Faraday, Newton and Einstein might make on their own are not enough. Mr Sandalow asserts, for instance, that the private sector naturally under-invests in fundamental research because profit-seeking businesses cannot fully capture the returns. First off, the private sector is not all for-profit. A great deal of basic research is done through private resources (such as foundations) that do not seek to maximise financial return.
And who is to say how much and what kind of investment in basic research is right? There is a vast range of valuable knowledge whose returns accrue more to society as a whole than to the producers of the knowledge. In medicine, creating routines to ensure that surgeons 【外科医生】wash their hands before they operate is no less valuable a public good than decoding the genome. IBM's development of a professional sales process, which was then adopted throughout the high-tech industry, was as vital to the diffusion of information technology as the discovery of the transistor principle. Virtually every day I turn to the internet to learn about how to solve computer problems that other users have discovered and share it at no charge.着中国daily 的例子也很生动
Of course these different kinds of knowledge are rarely perfectly in balance. Sometimes fundamental science runs ahead of concrete user-generated knowledge, for instance, and sometimes it is the other way round. But that is not an argument for turning to government. If the brightest and the best economists at the Fed continue to assert that a large nationwide housing bubble was unrecognisable, which government agency can we charge with identifying and correcting these subtle knowledge imbalances? Why not trust the autonomous, competing judgements of for- and not-for profit innovators seeking fame, fortune or excitement while the government focuses on those activities that only it can perform?