economics阅读贴bylxklys

lxklysUID: 2738043

Time for a (long overdue) change

是时候推行迟来的改变了

Dec 30th 2008

From The Economist print edition

好句 gre词汇 好例子

Both in Cuba and in American policy towards it

AFTER a scintilla(一点，丝毫) of regret over lost youth, to turn 50 should be to enter the prime of life, with a plenitude of projects and achievements. That is not the case for the Cuban revolution. Fifty years after Fidel Castro took power and started to impose communism in Cuba, the island is once again close to bankruptcy. “The accounts don’t square,”
Raúl Castro, Fidel’s slightly younger brother who last year took over as president, declared this week. His message was that Cubans will have to work harder and longer. Perks（额外津贴，奖赏） such as free holidays will be scrapped（废弃,废除） or curtailed（削减，缩短）.

But the Castro brothers do have one cause for grim（冷酷无情的）satisfaction. Later this month George Bush will become the tenth American president to leave office without having seen their overthrow（推翻，打倒）. That is not for want of trying: although America has for decades traded with communist regimes in China and Vietnam, it persists with an economic embargo (经济封锁)against Cuba, and under the Helms-Burton（《赫尔姆斯－伯顿法》：1996年通过的“赫尔姆斯伯顿法”就是老顽固思想的延伸，其实主要就是针对那些与美国的敌人（古巴）做生意的个人、公司、甚至是国家（例如该法案第三条规定，如果有外国公司同古巴公司作生意，美国公民和公司有权起诉它们并获得赔偿），实行“连坐”制——由于此法太过蔑视国际公认的行为准则，因此一直被各国唾弃，在21世纪初，美国政府迫于压力，一直推迟执行此法的执行。） act even tries to hinder. Cuba’s trade with other countries is in defiance of（违抗） international law. The embargo dates from the time when the cold war was hot, and when the contest between the United. States and its Latin American allies (sadly, often dictators) on the one hand, and Soviet communism and its Cuban beachhead（据点） on the other, was fought with guns. But Mr. Castro stopped trying to overthrow Latin American governments more than two decades ago, shortly before his Soviet sponsor collapsed.

Nowadays the battle waged （开始，进行）across the Florida Straits is largely a propaganda one for influence, especially in Latin America. In this, because of America’s embargo and its bullying, the Castros win far more than they deserve. After all, Cuba has precious little to boast about (see article). It is the only country in the Americas that locks citizens up for their beliefs（对信仰进行限制）. In a place that before 1959 boasted as many cattle as people, meat is such a scarce luxury that it is a crime to kill and eat a cow. Even the health and education systems, which once put those of many capitalist countries to shame, are now suffering decline. Then there is Fidel’s claim, earlier this year, that while Cuba has enshrined racial equality, America is irredeemably racist （不可救药的种族主义国家）and would never accept a black man as president.

Obama’s example, and his opportunity

All this means that for the Castros, Barack Obama may turn into a far more formidable foe （更加难以对付的敌人）than his predecessors. The danger starts with his example: after all, a young, black, progressive politician has no chance of reaching the highest office in Cuba, although a majority of the island’s people are black. Mr. Obama has already promised to reverse the restrictions on remittances(汇款)and travel by Cuban-Americans imposed by Mr. Bush. Once he is in office, the new president should go further and urge Congress to lift the embargo altogether. It is wrongheaded and ineffective. If it went, Cubans would know they had nobody except their rulers to blame for their plight（困境）.

Unlike his brother, Raúl Castro shows every sign of（全面的认同） recognizing that Cuba’s economy needs Chinese-style market reforms (even if so far he has been slow to implement these). His realism this week doubtless stems from a realisation that low oil prices threaten the bounteous subsidies（慷慨的补助） Cuba has been receiving from Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez (see article). If the embargo goes and economic change is under way（在进行中）, everything else in Cuba might be up for （为…做好准备）debate in a way it has not been for the past half century. That would be a revolution indeed.

PS: Fifty years after Fidel Castro took power and started to impose communism in Cuba, the island is once again close to bankruptcy. It is the only country in the Americas that locks citizens up for their beliefs（对信仰进行限制）. In a place that before 1959 boasted as many cattle as people, meat is such a scarce luxury that it is a crime to kill and eat a cow. Even the health and education systems, which once put those of many capitalist countries to shame, are now suffering decline.

此观点可对issue160的观点（有效力的领导最本质的品质就是对特定原则和目标的坚持，若受到流行观点的影响，他就一事无成。）以及ISSUE35的观点（无论在什么样的情况下，坚持自己的信仰要比放弃信仰好）进行反驳，卡斯特罗一直以来所信奉的共产主义以及采取的铁腕政策并没有给本国人民的生活带来一定程度的提高，相反在持续走低。

lxklysUID: 2738043

Mobile-phone culture移动电话文化

The Apparatgeist calls “机器灵魂”来电

词 句 例子
Elsewhere the physical environment determines which kinds of handsets prevail(流行),
says Younghee Jung, a design expert（专家） at Nokia, the world’s largest maker of handsets（手机）.（观点） In hot India, for instance, men rarely wear jackets, but their shirts have pockets to hold phones—which therefore cannot be large. Indian women keep phones in colourful pouches（钱包）, less as a fashion statement than as a way to protect the devices and preserve their resale（转售） value. It also makes for a noteworthy（显著的） contrast with Japan, says Ms Jung. If women there keep phones in a pouch and decorate them with stickers and straps（不干胶，胶带）, that has nothing to do with economics, but reflects the urge to personalise the handset. Phones are highly subsidised（补助） in Japan and the resale value is essentially nil（基本为0）, so it is not unusual to see lost units lying in the gutter.
上述观点和例子均可用来分析ISSUE208，即在某些情况下，物理环境也决定了人们的兴趣，并不能仅仅通过外表来认识该社会的理念和价值观。

lxklysUID: 2738043

A sea of troubles（节选）

Dec 30th 2008

From The Economist print edition

词 好句
例子

Now bind the restless（缺乏平静的） wave

Yet the mass extinction（灭绝）, however remote, that should be concentrating minds is that of mankind. It is not wise to dismiss(忽略，不考虑) it where CO2 emissions（放射物）, the other great curse of the oceans, are concerned. In the long run, the seas are the great sink for nearly all carbon. They may be able to help avert （避免，防止）some global warming—for instance, by providing storage for CO2, by providing energy through wave or tidal power, or by somehow taking carbon out of the atmosphere faster than at present. They will, however, continue to change and be changed as long as man continues to put so much carbon into the atmosphere.（解决预期问题所带来的好处）

节选二：The sea has become acidic（酸性的）, making life difficult, if not impossible, for marine organisms with calcium-carbonate shells or skeletons. That is also what acidification（酸性） does to coral reefs（珊瑚礁）, especially if they are already suffering from overfishing, overheating or pollution. Many are, and most are therefore gravely damaged. Some scientists believe that coral reefs, home to a quarter of all marine species, may virtually disappear within a few decades.（观点）

Each of these changes is a catastrophe. Together they make for something much worse. Moreover, they are happening alarmingly fast—in decades, rather than the aeons needed for fish and plants to adapt.

Many are irreversible（不可挽回的）. It will take tens of thousands of years for ocean chemistry to return to a conditionsimilar to its pre-industrial state of 200 years ago,(观点） says Britain’s most eminent body of scientists, the Royal Society.（不解决预期问题所带来的灾难）

蓝色标注的部分可用来分析ISSUE3和ISSUE56，都是用来反驳“应该把钱更多的投入到现实问题以解决当务之急的观点”

lxklysUID: 2738043

Sex and the single black woman
词 好短语 好句 观点
How the mass incarceration(监禁) of black men hurts black women
Apr 8th 2010
| From The Economist print edition
IMAGINE that the world consists of 20 men and 20 women, all of them heterosexual and in search of a mate. Since the numbers are even（对等的）, everyone can find a partner. But what happens if you take away one man?（疑问句开头，吸引注意） You might not think this would make much difference. You would be wrong, argues Tim Harford, a British economist, in a book called “The Logic of Life”. With 20 women pursuing 19 men, one woman faces the prospect of spinsterhood（独身）. So she ups her game（此处译作胜出）. Perhaps she dresses more seductively（诱惑地，吸引地）. Perhaps she makes an extra effort to be obliging（热心助人的）. Somehow or other, she “steals” a man from one of her fellow women. That newly single woman then ups her game, too, to steal a man from someone else. A chain reaction ensues. Before long, every woman has to try harder, and every man can relax a little.
Real life is more complicated, of course, but this simple model illustrates an important truth. In the marriage market, numbers matter（关系重大）. And among African-Americans, the disparity（不对等） is much worse than in Mr Harford’s imaginary example. Between the ages of 20 and 29, one black man in nine is behind bars. For black women of the same age, the figure is about one in 150. For obvious reasons, convicts are excluded from the dating pool. And many women also steer（遵循，操纵） clear of ex-cons（有前科）, which makes a big difference when one young black man in three can expect to be locked up at some point.
Removing so many men from the marriage market has profound （深度的）consequences. As incarceration rates exploded（激增） between 1970 and 2007, the proportion（比例） of US-born black women aged 30-44 who were married plunged（下降） from 62% to 33%. Why this happened is complex and furiously （激烈地）debated. The era of mass imprisonment began as traditional mores（传统道德观） were already crumbling（崩溃）, following the sexual revolution of the 1960s and the invention of the contraceptive pill（避孕药）. It also coincided with greater opportunities for women in the workplace. These factors must surely have had something to do with the decline of marriage.
But jail（监狱） is a big part of the problem, argue Kerwin Kofi Charles, now at the University of Chicago, and Ming Ching Luoh of National Taiwan University. They divided America up into geographical and racial “marriage markets”, to take account of（考虑到） the fact that most people marry someone of the same race who lives relatively （相对地）close to them. Then, after crunching（统计） the census numbers, they found that a one percentage point increase in the male incarceration rate was associated with a 2.4-point reduction in the proportion of women who ever marry. （句式结构很好）Could it be, however, that mass incarceration is a symptom of increasing social dysfunction（官能障碍）, and that it was this social dysfunction that caused marriage to wither? Probably not. For similar crimes, America imposes much harsher penalties than other rich countries. Mr Charles and Mr Luoh controlled for crime rates, as a proxy（取代物） for social dysfunction, and found that it made no difference to their results. They concluded that “higher male imprisonment has lowered the likelihood that women marry…and caused a shift in the gains from marriage away from women and towards men.”（观点1）
Learning and earningSimilar problems afflict （使苦恼，折磨）working-class whites, but they are more concentrated among blacks. Some 70% of black babies are born out of wedlock（未婚生育）. The collapse of the traditional family has made black Americans far poorer and lonelier than they would otherwise have been. The least-educated black women suffer the most. In 2007 only 11% of US-born black women aged 30-44 without a high school diploma（毕业文凭） had a working spouse, according to the Pew Research Centre. Their college-educated sisters fare（生活得，遭遇） better, but are still affected by the sex imbalance. Because most seek husbands of the same race—96% of married black women are married to black men—they are ultimately fishing in the same pool.
Black women tend to stay in school longer than black men. Looking only at the non-incarcerated population, black women are 40% more likely to go to college. They are also more likely than white women to seek work. One reason why so many black women strive（奋斗） so hard is because they do not expect to split（分担） the household bills with a male provider. And the educational disparity creates its own tensions. （观点2）If you are a college-educated black woman with a good job and you wish to marry a black man who is your socioeconomic equal（社会经济地位相当）, the odds（不对等的） are not good.
“I thought I was a catch(圈套，隐藏的困难),” sighs an attractive black female doctor at a hospital in Washington, DC. Black men with good jobs know they are “a hot commodity”, she observes. When there are six women chasing one man, “It’s like, what are you going to do extra, to get his attention?” Some women offer sex on the first date, she says, which makes life harder for those who prefer to combine romance with commitment. She complains about a recent boyfriend, an electrician whom she had been dating for about six months, whose phone started ringing late at night. It turned out to be his other girlfriend. Pressed（困难的是）, he said he didn’t realise the relationship was meant to be exclusive.
The skewed（不对等的） sex ratio “puts black women in an awful spot,” says Audrey Chapman, a relationship counselor（顾问） and the author of several books with titles such as “Getting Good Loving”. Her advice to single black women is pragmatic: love yourself, communicate better and so on. She says that many black men and women, having been brought up by single mothers, are unsure what role a man should play in the home. The women expect to be in charge; the men sometimes resent this. Nisa Muhammad of the Wedded Bliss Foundation, a pro-marriage group, urges her college-educated sisters to consider marrying honorable blue-collar workers, such as the postman. But the simplest way to help the black family would be to lock up（看好） fewer black men for non-violent offences.
本文的主要观点：
1.黑人男性的犯罪率提升，导致无罪的男性减少，再加上监狱造成的长期分离，从而使得黑人女性单身率提高
2. 女性的教育水平提升，在社会上很难找到与他们匹配的黑人男性，因此也不易结婚。
3.而最简单的解决办法则是把那些没犯罪的黑人男性给看好。

lxklysUID: 2738043

The battle for Thailand
词：v./n./adj   adv观点    好短语    好句
Political chaos beckons—unless there is an election and an honest discussion about the monarchy’s(君主制) futureFOR decades Thai politics suffered from a surfeit of（过量） pragmatism. Indeed, grimy compromises were dignified as “Thai solutions”. Parties tussled （争辩，扭打）over the perks of office, without letting policies or principles get in the way. When the bickering （争吵）became too intense, the army would step in（干预，介入）—18 times since the advent of constitutional monarchy in 1932. Presiding over a messy （肮脏的）but largely functioning polity has been a revered（令人尊敬的） king, Bhumibol Adulyadej, whose admirers have no difficulty in reconciling （调和）the contradictory ideas that he is both “above politics” and also the guarantor of stability.
These days, pragmatism（实用主义） has given way to（让步，屈服） dogmatic intransigence（教条主义的极端不妥协）. Huge demonstrations on the streets of Bangkok this week by red-shirted （红衫军）anti-government protesters have produced few hints of compromise. Contributing to this febrile atmosphere is an unspoken fear. King Bhumibol, 82, has been hospitalised for several months. Although he is reportedly in better health now, Thailand needs to start thinking about what will come when his reign ends. That the succession may be rocky only adds to the threat from the political stand-off. Thailand urgently needs to rediscover its lost flair（才华；鉴别力） for pragmatism and to rebuild a functioning political system.
Looking on the bright sideAs a red-shirted sea flooded Bangkok this week, the government’s supporters played down（贬低） the tumult（骚乱）. At least it was mostly peaceful, as The Economist went to press, unlike the street battles seen in late 2008 and last April. The stockmarket actually rose. Rather than the 1m demonstrators the organisers had promised, “only” 100,000-150,000 took part. And they, sneered government supporters, were probably all paid to turn up by the fugitive（逃亡的） billionaire and former prime minister they support, Thaksin Shinawatra. The mass blood donations for supplies to splatter on（洒在，溅在） the office of the prime minister, Abhisit Vejjajiva, was a creepy stunt（毛骨悚然的噱头）.（陈述事实的好句式）Under this reasoning, the calm, resolute Mr Abhisit was right to defy mob（乌合之众） rule and the demand for the dissolution of parliament, and wait to unveil an
orderly, slow electoral timetable.
This complacent （自满的）analysis flatters Mr Abhisit (the staunch democrat actually scurried to take refuge in an army barracks). It also understates Thailand’s difficulties in four ways. First, the red shirts do enjoy considerable popular support, and not just in the poor north-east from which so many hail（喝彩）. Mr Thaksin was a high-handed leader convicted of corruption. But his policies, such as affordable health care, helped the poor. “Populism”（平民主义）, sniff（嗤之以鼻的说） his critics. But popularity is what competitive politics is about, and the present government has shamelessly borrowed his policies. Second, whatever Mr Thaksin’s faults, his supporters have a point. He was ousted by(驱逐，撵走) a coup in 2006 and the present government was installed, with the backing of the army, by a parliamentary fix, not an election.
Third, the political system has all but broken down, as the government itself tacitly admits when it argues that an election would not solve Thailand’s problems. It may well be right. Democracy works only when the parties that lose an election accept the outcome. And if, as might well happen, Mr Abhisit’s government lost an election to proxies（代理） for Mr Thaksin, the same alliance of military and civilian elites that toppled（推翻） him in 2006 and his allies in 2008 might again reject the popular verdict（陪审团的裁决）. Instability would persist.
Fourth, and perhaps most important（ISSUE用法）, the backdrop to this week’s street theatre is the looming(隐约呈现的现象) royal succession. The king, who has reigned for six decades, is widely revered. His anointed（涂油礼，一种宗教仪式） successor, the crown prince, is not. Indeed, he is widely disliked and already shows signs of meddling in politics. Although, in theory, the monarchy inhabits a realm far above the murk（黑暗） of daily government, it has been an important source of legitimacy for the unelected prime（主要的） minister. The king accepted the coup that overthrew Mr Thaksin in 2006. His senior advisers blessed it. And he never publicly repudiated（拒绝…的效力） the yellow-shirted “royalists”, whose revolt in late 2008 led to the downfall（垮台） of a government led by Mr Thaksin’s proxies.
The sound of silenceThe fear is not just that the present government relies on tacit royal endorsement for its legitimacy. It is that the king’s death will remove a moderating（温和的，稳健的） influence that has kept irreconcilable political differences in check（受控制的）.
（陈述事实型句子）Heightening fears is the almost total silence on the issue in Thai public life.
（观点）Harsh laws against lèse-majesté ensure that the future of the monarchy is a matter of private gossip, not public debate. This leader, and our article considering the succession（继任） in some detail, could not appear in Thailand. Indeed they will cause great hurt and offence in some quarters there. We regret this. But to discuss Thailand’s future without considering its monarchy is itself to belittle an important national institution.（观点）
That discussion needs above all to happen in Thailand—as it did in the period up to 1932. The country’s present political quagmire（困境） seems impassable partly because debate over what to do is so stunted. But there is a way out. It would involve an early election, producing a government with popular legitimacy. It would probably also entail（继承） a decentralization（地方分权） of power away from Bangkok so that citizens of regions such as the north-east feel less alienated from their rulers—a sense of alienation that, more than ethnic or religious tensions, underpins（巩固） the long-running, bloody insurgency in the Muslim-majority southern provinces（对疏离感的解释）. And a true “Thai solution” would also imply a monarchy genuinely above political meddling or manipulation.
This would be in the royal family’s own interest. Republicans lurk（潜在，埋伏） in the wings, but a majority still respects the king. The monarchies in Malaysia and Cambodia have painfully lost influence to populist（平民主义者） commoners. By the time Nepal’s princelings（青年王子） woke up they were citizens of a republic. Hence, to endure, the monarchy has to win a debate, not suppress one（观点）. And it would surely be better for Thailand to discuss all this under a monarch trusted by many to have their interests at heart. Difficult and distressing today, Thailand’s national soul-searching（深思，反思） will only grow harder.
本文的观点可以用来分析
1民主与专制的不同影响，以及如何转变专制为民主
2政府对公民质疑的包容程度对社会的影响ISSUE105和ISSUE142
3任何领域的领导者是否应该只在位5年，就能取得成功ISSUE70
4政治活动影响人们生活方方面面，例如思想等ISSUE97

lxklysUID: 2738043

Less of the lèse-majesté laws
词 好句 短语 观点
pleaseFollowing this week's cover leader and briefing, our readers debate whether laws protecting the monarch deserve a place in modern ThailandMar 23rd 2010 | From The Economist online
DEADLOCK and periodic spasms(发作)of chaos have come to define Thailand’s governance in recent years. The going has never been smooth: since its modern state was founded in 1932, Thailand has seen 18 coups（军方发动的政变）. But with the passage（时间的推移） of an impressively democratic constitution（民主体制） in 1997, it became feasible for politicians to use policies to rally（集合） popular support behind a single party. Thaksin Shinawatra played this field more ably than anyone else; by 2005 he had become Thailand’s first prime minister ever to serve out（做到期满） a full term in office. But many of the country’s most educated and influential citizens saw him as a crook（行骗的老手） and a budding tyrant（正在发展为暴君）. Their protests, organised under a yellow banner—in reference to（关于） the palace—paved the way for his ouster（驱逐，罢黜）by military coup in 2006. (注意其描述)
After a botched（糟糕的） attempt at government, the army withdrew from centre-stage. But when a party led by a “proxy” for Mr Thaksin (he had gone into exile) won the next election, in December 2008, it was hounded(烦扰，纠缠) from office by popular “yellow-shirt” demonstrations and the defection（变党，变节） of parliamentary supporters. The present government, led by Abhisit Vejjajiva, the prime minister, took office（就职） with the tacit（心照不宣的）support of the army. Last April, demonstrations by its opponents, who wear red and remain loyal to Mr Thaksin, forced the cancellation（取消） of a regional summit.（地方高级会议）
The two sides seem irreconcilable, in all but their avowed respect for King Bhumibol Adulyadej. The yellow faction burnishes itself with the palace’s colour. The reds do not impugn（怀疑）His Majesty. All parties agree that he must stay, and be revered. It is often said that the monarchy is the only thing holding Thailand together. The neutrality of the king, who presides over this mess, and of his heirs, is protected by a law of lèse-majesté—one of the most draconian（严厉的）in the world. Any citizen can bring charges under it and anyone convicted may face up to 15 years’ imprisonment. According to the kingdom’s foreign ministry, these rules are necessary to protect the monarch from having to wade（费力的行走） into politics to defend himself.
Because of this law, last week’s issue of The Economist was not distributed in Thailand. In our extended discussion of the royal succession, we ran the risk of causing an “injured majesty” or laesa maiestas. Succession aside, we tried to make another point, through our accompanying leader article: this is no way to have a conversation about such a serious matter.（观点） By making it impossible to discuss basic questions about what will happen and what should happen, laws that restrict free speech prevent ordinary Thais and interested observers from having a voice or even a clear view of the facts(false rumours of the king’s death sparked a two-day sell-off on the stockmarket).
Quite apart from the failings（缺点） of the main political factions, or even the king’s (see our coverage of 15 months ago, or last April’s Banyan), these laws are rotten. They are unjust and they stifle（抑止） vital discussion.
We hold that Thailand’s lèse-majesté laws should be lifted（撤销）. They harm the country itself; on those grounds they should be removed.
主要观点：
1.泰国国王对国内混乱政局采取中立的原因是由于lèse-majesté laws的保护；可用作ISSUE17的反例，即要求每个人遵守公平的法律，抵抗不公的法律不具可行性；
2.而国家之所以暴动不断也主要是因为这个法律的腐朽：一方面使得国王不作为；一方面又限制了人们的言论自由，因此需要废除,此观点可用来分析ISSUE174法律的僵化和改革问题；还可用作ISSUE160的反例，即不顾环境一味坚持所带来的危害。

lxklysUID: 2738043

Technology in education
词（副词）
句子
观点
Over the last several decades, large investments have been made to equip primary and secondary schools with computers and teacher training. Now it is time to examine whether there has been a sufficient return on this investment. Does technology really offer substantive(真的，实际的) advantages to students? Does technology accelerate or impede real progress in education? Similarly, does technology serve as a teaching crutch（帮助教学的东西） or does it offer the ability to promote sustainable change（一定的变化） in the world’s classrooms? And if so, is the technology deployed（有效地使用） today being used to best possible advantage? What conditions need to exist in schools for technology to have an impact? （ISSUE开头可用）

.

The opening statements for and against the motion give some ground for agreement, and much ground for argument.

Both of our speakers, I deduce, are persuadable that technology could in principle be a vital source of advancement in learning-if only it was to be implemented with enough brilliance and resources. But is even this true? I would be pleased to hear from commenters who believe that education is primarily a matter of character building, and, as such, an activity best conducted among human beings, with the least possible mediation. Will any of our grandchildren look back on his or her schooldays, and credit his or her success in life to "a really good computer"?

反方1：Is there an argument for keeping new technology out of the classroom, precisely because it is so ubiquitous everywhere else already? Can a child who is chatting online or video-gaming for six hours every day really benefit from spending even more time staring at a screen in the classroom?

How do we even measure-and how broadly should we measure-the educational impact of new technologies? No doubt, by putting iPods in the classroom, we can improve iPod skills. No doubt a newer generation of microprocessors can help the maths class calculate pi to even more decimal places. But what about social skills? Kindness? Common sense? Happiness? Physical fitness? Latin and Greek? Do those go into the metrics公制长度单位）米的, 以米为基础的?（观点1：这些现代科技虽然提高了人们的某些技能例如算术等，但同时也损害了人的社会性，可用来分析科技对人的影响并不总是积极的）

All of this, moreover, assumes that resources are plentiful. But what about school districts with very limited budgets, or education ministries in poorer countries? （观点2：对某些不发达国家，这套理论是不适用的）Should they see technology as a way to cut the cost of delivering education? Or as an expensive add-on to basic teaching methods? We are in danger of encouraging them to take the first approach, only to discover that new technologies are all too often disastrously（灾难地） complicated and expensive to implement-as we find often enough in other areas of government and industry.

Finally, for now, let us remember that we are talking here about new technologies. Their application is, by definition, a matter of experiment. Do we want to experiment with our children's education? Do you want someone experimenting on your children? Perhaps you do, and perhaps you should, since only by experimenting can we ever make progress. But if you prefer educational methods tried and tested over centuries, please say so. Likewise（同样地，照样地）, if you feel it would be barmy（愚蠢的，疯狂的） to exclude from education technologies（拒绝…进入…） that are commonplace elsewhere in life, please say so too. These are both defensible-and assailable（可辨的且易受攻击的）-positions.（观点3：从公民的常识和意愿出发，阐明技术在教育上的不适用性）

Robert Cottrell Deputy Editor, Economist.com, The Economist Newspaper

观点：

1.综述科技的利弊；

2.这套理论如果应用在不发达国家，则会产生荒谬的结果；

3.即使客观条件允许，从公民的主观意愿出发，这个也行不通。

反方2：Technology has transformed everyday life in much of the world. Goods that were once the preserve of the rich are now household items. Food is abundant and varied. Travel has been transformed. News and entertainment come to us instantly from around the world. Technology and the media have transformed all aspects of human life - except education!（观点1：开门见山）（ISSUE开头可用）

Politicians still campaign for 'education, education, education', lamenting（痛恨，遗憾） the poor performance of their schools.（教育在各国糟糕的表现） America, the earliest country to be infatuated（使热恋） with computers in the classroom, gets mediocre（平庸的） outputs from its school system by international standards. Most poor countries struggle to reach the Millennium Development Goal of universal primary education. For them universal secondary access is a distant dream. Meanwhile rich countries worry about boys dropping-out of school.

Technology is replacing scarcity by abundance in other aspects of life: why not in education?（过渡段）

It is not for lack of prophets（先知）. Ever since the invention of the blackboard each new communications medium has been hailed（如雨后春笋般发生） as an educational revolution. Rosy forecasts about the impact of radio, film, television, programmed learning, computers and the Internet succeeded each other through the 20th century although, revealingly, each prophet compared the revolutionary potential of the newest medium to the printing press, not to the previous technological white hope!

Why hasn't it worked? Why has the continuing introduction of new technologies and new media added little to the quality of most education? What can we learn from those few applications of communications media that are acknowledged successes?

Technology is the application of scientific and other organized knowledge to practical tasks by organizations consisting of people and machines（technology定义）. In "The Wealth of Nations" Adam Smith described how applying knowledge to the practical task of making pins led to a factory that produced them with consistent quality in higher volume and at lower cost than artisans（工匠） making each pin by hand. The technological bases of Adam Smith's pin factory were the principles of specialisation, division of labour and economies of scale.（观点2：对科技重新下了定义，提出了亚当斯密效率最优的原则）可用来分析科技的影响

Most applications of technology in education disappoint because they ignore these principles and so fail to use technology's intrinsic（固有的，内在的） strengths to tackle real problems. What are the practical tasks that challenge education?

In my work at UNESCO and the Commonwealth of Learning I spend many hours with ministers of education; sometimes individually, sometimes in groups at international meetings. The practical task facing ministers of education is to expand access to quality education as economically as possible. They want the same outcomes as Adam Smith's pin factory: higher volume, consistent quality, lower cost.

This is the great opportunity for technology in education. Tinkering（胡乱地改进） with traditional classroom teaching cannot achieve these three outcomes because improving any one outcome makes the others worse（观点4传统的教育方式不能使得效率最优）. Increasing volume with larger classes lowers quality. Enhancing quality with more learning materials raises costs, and so on.

Successful ways of introducing technology and media to education tackle this challenge head on（直接的）: cutting costs, increasing volume and assuring quality all at the same time.

The best examples are the open universities. The UK Open University has created a multi-media learning system that enrols（使入学） 200,000 students annually（每年）, operates at a lower cost than other UK universities, and ranks 5th, just above Oxford University, on aggregate ratings of teaching quality. In a quite different context India's Indira Gandhi National Open University enrols 1.5 million students and places 17th in the latest web ranking of universities on the sub-continent.

The secret of the open universities' success is twofold（双重的）. First, they tackle real problems, in this case scaling up（扩大） educational provision and taking it to people who cannot access conventional teaching. Second they combine people and technology, using the principles of specialisation, division of labour, and economies of scale, to create new learning systems that are scaleable at low cost with consistent quality.

The tragedy, and why you must vote for the motion, is that these successes are rare.（观点5：之所以反对，是因为成功的案例太少了） Most attempts to introduce media into education do not take advantage of technology's strengths. Instead, they continue in the tradition of education as a cottage industry（小农产业）, hoping to make it more effective by providing the individual artisan, the classroom teacher, with fancier tools.

This approach is doomed to（注定） failure. It increases costs because the technology is simply an add-on. The number of learners remains essentially unchanged. Quality goes down because few teachers know how to use the new tools effectively and the students, who often do know how to use them, would rather apply them to other tasks.（从老师和学生的对比来说明）

Having devoted much of my life to promoting the effective use of technology in education it saddens me that I have to support this motion because there are still so few examples of its effective deployment. I only hope that your passing the motion will be a wake-up call to educators and make them reflect seriously on why their use of technology has been such a disappointment. I suggest three reasons.（开始提出原因）

First, we assume too often that technology is the answer without asking what the question was.（我们需关心的是要解决的问题是什么，而不仅仅只看到答案） Successful applications begin with a clear and difficult problem to solve instead of a vague assumption that technology will enhance teaching.

Second, we usually focus on improving existing teaching systems whereas technology is better used to create new learning systems. （科技的有效利用必须配合体制的改革）Enjoining all teachers to become artisans of eLearning is not going to improve educational outcomes.

Third, there is the quest（寻求） for the magic medium, the ultimate technology that will revolutionise education. Yesterday it was the Internet; today it is Open Educational Resources. But there is no magic medium and never will be. Each technology has its strengths. The task is to use them to create a world where education of quality is abundantly available.（我们应该学会的是如何有效地应用科技，而不是把改革教育的希望寄托在新技术的发明上）

We are still a long way from that goal. To pretend otherwise is to sell technology far too short. So far, and I say it with regret,the continuing introduction of new technologies and new media has added little to the quality of most education.

观点：

1.举出实例来说明教育的严峻状况；

2.提出教育对科技应用失败的原因是没有遵循效率最优的原则；

3.举出两个正面例子来说明科技的好处；

4.但由于不具有普遍性，所以不能说明科技对教育有帮助；

5.分析原因，主要从技术虽然是新的，但体制的僵化导致无效率这个角度阐述；

6.再从3个角度分析科技对教育没起到作用的原因

关键词：

效率最大化，体制改革，科技效用

lxklysUID: 2738043

technology in education

词 adv

好句

观点

好短语

正方：In this debate I would like to take the contrary position and claim that new technologies and new media do make a significant contribution to the quality of education, at least under certain circumstances. More specifically, before the end of the debate, I will demonstrate that technology can make a particularly significant contribution when coordinated with the training of teachers to integrate(与…成为一体) technology into their teaching, with applications that draw on（利用） the unique capabilities of technology, and with supportive curricular, assessment, and school contexts that advance complex problem solving, creative thinking, and life-long learning—skills that are needed to support an information society and knowledge economy. （观点1）

Certainly, one can not defend the position that all applications of technology make significant contributions to the quality of education in all situations.（观点2） There have been numerous studies from around the world which have appeared in the popular press（最流行的出版物） that show no relationship between computer availability or use and student test scores, such as the study by Banks, Cresswell, and Ainley in Australia (2003) and the study by Dynarski, et al., in the U.S. (2007). There have even been studies that show a negative relationship between computer use and learning, such as the Fuchs and Woessmann OECD study (2004) and the Wenglinsky study in the U.S. (1998).

But there have also been studies that show a positive relationship between computer use and learning, such a U.S. study published by the National Center for Educational Statistics (2001) and studies in England published by BECTA (Cox 2003; Harrison, et al., 2003).

How do we make sense（说得通） out of these mixed results?（转折）

Often single studies—even those that are well-designed—are constrained by the particular context or situation in which they were conducted and this limits the generalizability（普遍性） of their conclusions.（观点3） Let us take as an example a study conducted in Israeli schools by Angrist and Lavy (2001), which was featured in The Economist several years ago. This study examined the relationship between the use of "computer-assisted instruction" (or CAI, i.e. tutorial software) and test scores in 4th and 8th grade mathematics and Hebrew classes in a random sample（随意抽取的样本） of schools that successfully applied to participate in a national program to increase the use of computers in Israeli schools. Scores of students in these schools were compared to those in schools that elected not to participate in the program or were not chosen to do so. Typically, self selection is a fatal design flaw in research studies but the researchers went to great lengths（为达到目的不遗余力） to statistically equate the two types of schools by including a variety of school, student, and teacher variables in their analyses. They found no evidence that the increased use of tutorials（教学辅助工具） raised pupil test scores; indeed, they found a negative and marginally significant relationship between program participation and 4th grade math scores. （这个可以用作人们对专家的不信任原因的例子ISSUE68） However, as in many similar studies, there are important features of this study that limit the results. First, this study is limited to a particular use of computers (tutorials), within specific grades (4th and 8th) and subject areas (math and Hebrew) and within a particular timeframe（时间框架） (after one year of implementation) and a particular country (Israel) with a particular national curriculum. Furthermore, in an analysis of teacher surveys, the researchers found no evidence of differences between participating and non-participating classrooms in inputs（投入物）, instructional（教学的） methods, or teacher training. More significant is that fact that even the most active participants (4th grade math teachers) indicated that they used computers somewhere between "never" and "sometimes". Consequently, the study is particularly limited by the marginal（最低限度的） nature of the intervention. All of these factors constrain the generalizability of the findings and certainly do not allow the authors to make the general claim, as they do, that "CAI is no better and may be even be less effective than other teaching methods."

In order to make a general statement about the impact of technology on education, a large number of studies that cover a variety of situations must be included in the analysis. For this, I turn to a meta-analysis (or an analysis of analyses) done in 2003 by James Kulik of the University of Michigan. Kulik included in his statistical analysis the results of 75 carefully-designed studies collected from a broad search of the research literature（小册子，小传单）. As a group, these studies looked at several types of educational technology applications (such as tutorials, simulations, and word processors), in a variety of subjects (such as mathematics, natural science, social science, reading and writing), and a range of grade levels (from vary young to high school). His findings across studies can be summarized as follows:

Students who used computer tutorials in mathematics, natural science, or social science scored significantly higher in these subjects compared to traditional approaches, equivalent（相当于） to an increase from 50th to 72nd percentile（百分位数） in test scores. Students who used simulation software in science also scored higher, equivalent to a jump from 50th to 66th percentile.

Very young students who used computers to write their own stories scored significantly higher on measures of reading skill, equivalent to a boost from 50th to 80th percentile for kindergarteners and from 50th to 66th percentile for first graders. However, the use of tutorials in reading did not make a difference.

Students who used word processors（文字处理器） or otherwise used the computer for writing scored higher on measures of writing skill, equivalent to a rise from 50th to 62nd percentile.（可用作分析科技带来的作用）

By including a large and diverse set of studies in the analysis, it is clear that technology can make contributions to the quality of education that are both statistically significant and educationally meaningful.（观点4） Nonetheless, the classrooms included in this meta-analysis were, by and large（总的说来）, conducted（操纵，控制） within the traditional educational paradigm(范例，样式，模范) and the uses of technology were fairly（相当的） ordinary. What if advanced technologies were used to ignite a major transformation of the educational system? How much more of a contribution could it make under these circumstances? These are questions to which I will return later in the debate.

本文主要观点：
1.在某些情况下，科技在教育中的应用时有促进作用的；
2.但并不是所有情况下都适用，概括了在流行刊物上所存在的两种不同观点，有的肯定，有的否定
3.再分析产生不同观点的原因：举例说明调查手段的差异导致了这样的结果（一个别人的<以偏概全>，一个作者自己的<全面>），从而肯定了在某些情况下科技对教育的作用；
4.最后，作者再描述了一下在当今还是传统教育方法占主导地位的现状

lxklysUID: 2738043

The future of publishing
E-publish or perishThe iPad and its kind are both a boon(恩惠) and a bane（祸根）
for book publishers

词（adv) 句子 观点 短语
JOHN GRISHAM, a prolific（多产的） author of legal thrillers（惊悚小说家）, long refused to allow his books to be sold in electronic form. In a television interview last year, he lamented that e-books and heavy discounting of printed books by big retailers were “a disaster in the long term” for the publishing industry. But last month Mr Grisham’s publisher announced that the author had had a change of heart: henceforth all of his books will be available in virtual form. His timing was impeccable. On April 3rd Apple is due to start shipping the first of its iPad tablet computers, which are expected to give a big boost to e-book sales.
The iPad’s impending(即将发生的) arrival has created commercial intrigue（好奇心） worthy of a Grisham yarn. A group of big publishers, including Macmillan and HarperCollins, have been using Apple’s interest in e-books to persuade Amazon, which currently dominates sales of digital books, to renegotiate its pricing model. At one point in January an angry Amazon briefly removed many of Macmillan’s books from its own virtual shelves before reinstating them after some authors kicked up（激起） a fuss.
Like many other parts of the media industry, publishing is being radically reshaped by the growth of the internet. Online retailers are already among the biggest distributors of books. Now e-books threaten to undermine sales of the old-fashioned kind. In response, publishers are trying to shore up（重整） their conventional business while preparing for a future in which e-books will represent a much bigger chunk of sales
Quite how big is the subject of much debate. PricewaterhouseCoopers, a consultancy（咨询公司）, reckons e-books will represent about 6% of consumer book sales in North America by 2013, up from 1.5% last year (see chart). Carolyn Reidy, the boss of Simon & Schuster, another big publisher, thinks they could account for 25% of the industry’s sales in America within three to five years. She may well be right if the iPad and other tablet computers take off, the prices of dedicated e-readers such as Amazon’s Kindle keep falling and more consumers start reading books on smart-phones. Mobclix, an advertising outfit（供销商）, reckons the number of programmes, or apps, for books on Apple’s iPhone recently surpassed（超过） that for games, previously the largest category.
Alert to（警惕于） such shifts, publishers are trying to undo（废除） a mess that is largely of their own making. For some time they have operated a “wholesale” pricing model with Amazon under which the online retailer pays publishers for books and then decides what it charges the public for them. This has enabled it to set the price of many new e-book titles and bestsellers at $9.99, which is often less than it has paid for them. Amazon has kept prices low in order to boost demand（促进需求） for its Kindle, which dominates the e-reader market but faces stiff competition from Sony and others.
Publishers fret（担心） that this has conditioned（影响） consumers to expect lower prices for all kinds of books. And they worry that the downward spiral（持续走低） will further erode（腐蚀） their already thin margins（微薄的利润）—some have had to close imprints and lay off staff in recent years—as well as bring further dismay to struggling bricks-and-mortar booksellers (see article). Unless things change, some in the industry predict that publishers will suffer a similar fate to that of music companies, whose fortunes faded when Apple turned the industry upside down by selling individual songs cheaply online.（本段可用于论证科技进步例如电脑发明什么的对某些人带来的不好的影响）
Ironically, publishers have turned to Apple to help them twist Amazon’s arm. Keen to（热情的） line up（排队） lots of titles（权益） for new iPad owners, the company has agreed to an “agency model” under which publishers get to set the price at which their e-books are sold, with Apple taking 30% of the revenue generated. Faced with these deals, Amazon has reportedly agreed similar terms with several big publishers. As a result, the price of some popular e-books is expected to rise to $12.99 or $14.99.
Once Apple and Amazon have taken their cut（紧缩开支）, publishers are likely to make less money on e-books under this new arrangement than under the wholesale one（对出版商的影响）—a price they seem willing to pay in order to limit Amazon’s influence and bolster（增长） print sales. Yet there are good reasons to doubt whether this and other strategies, such as delaying the release of electronic versions of new books for several months after the print launch, will halt（暂停，停顿） the creeping commoditisation of books.
Apple, for instance, is rumoured（谣传） to have kept the option of charging much less for popular e-books if they are being heavily discounted elsewhere. Other firms, including the mighty Google, are likely to enter the fray soon, which will only increase the competitive pressure.
This is particularly alarming for publishers because digital margins are almost as slender（微薄的） as print ones. True, e-books do not need to be printed and shipped to retailers. But these costs typically represent only a tenth of a printed book’s retail price, estimates Credit Suisse, an investment bank. Meanwhile, as David Young, the boss of Hachette Book Group, points out, publishers are incurring（招致） new costs in the form of investment in systems to store and distribute(分配) digital texts, as well as to protect them from piracy（盗版）.
Publishers are investing in the internet in other ways too. A few are starting to build their own online groups of readers. For instance Tor.com, a publisher-run website for science-fiction and fantasy enthusiasts, highlights（强调） content relevant to its members, even if some of it comes from rival publishers. “This is a rare sign that the light’s finally gone on in publishing,” says Mike Shatzkin of Idea Logical, a consultancy. Sourcebooks, a medium-sized publisher that has developed an online group focused on poetry, found that sales of its books rose by more than 50% in the six weeks after poems from them had featured（显现） on the site.
Publishers are also pumping（将大量资金投入） plenty of money into what Hachette’s Mr Young calls “enriched e-books”, which combine the printed word with audio, video and other media to create content that can command a premium（额外的） price. The launch of the iPad will speed up this experimentation, but it is not the only device to catch publishers’ attention. HarperCollins, for instance, has sold hundreds of thousands of cartridges（录音带） in Britain that let users read electronic versions of classic texts on Nintendo DS portable game consoles（操纵台）. Charlie Redmayne, the “chief digital officer” of one of its units, reckons many of the buyers would not have splashed out（心血来潮地随意花钱） on print editions, so the move to a new platform（平台） has created fresh demand for books.
Indeed, many publishing executives like to argue that the digital revolution could usher（引领） in a golden age of reading in which many more people will be exposed（显露） to digital texts. They also point out that new technologies such as print on demand, which makes printing short runs（趋势） of physical books more economical, should help them squeeze（挤出） more money out of the old-fashioned format. And they insist that the shift away from printed books will be slow, giving them more time to adapt to the brave new digital world. （关于digital revolution的好观点）
Perhaps. But there are still plenty of inefficiencies in the supply chain for conventional books that firms such as Amazon and Apple can exploit. Many publishers, for example, still take far too long to get books to market in print or electronic form, missing valuable opportunities. Ms Reidy at Simon & Schuster says she has brought functions such as typesetting（创作） in-house to boost efficiency. At Sourcebooks responsibility for making books has even been shifted from the editorial team to the firm’s head of technology, underlining the need to think digitally right from the start of the commissioning（交付） process.（不好的影响）
The publishing firms that survive what promises to be a wrenching（猛烈地） transition will be those whose bosses and employees can learn quickly to think like multimedia impresarios（指挥，经理） rather than purveyors（供货商） of perfect prose（散文）. Not all of them will be able to turn that particular page successfully.
本文主要观点:
1.由一个作者引入电子书的普及；
2.再进一步引入ipad，说明互联网技术对出版业的影响，包括好的和坏的；
3.再上升为数码革命对出版业的影响；
4.作者自己总结出版业发展趋势:它将经历一个猛烈地变革，这些出版商可能会更注重出版物的形式而忽视其内容，并且说纸质阅读并不是那么轻易地就能被改变。

lxklysUID: 2738043

commentary by lxklys

From bad to worse


AS THE Obama administration spreads enthusiasm about a proposal to replace a patchwork(拼凑的东西) of state education standards with national ones, it might also heed（注意，留心） a cautionary tale（警示）. In the 1990s California too established rigorous（严格的） standards. “We thought they were the highest,” up there with those of Massachusetts and Indiana, says Mike Petrilli of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, an education think-tank in Washington, DC. But California never translated those standards into results（没有执行到底）. Its public schools are, with some exceptions, awful. Moreover, the state’s fiscal crisis is about to make them even worse.


California’s 8th-graders (14-year-olds), for example, ranked 46th in maths last year. Only Alabama, Mississippi and the District of Columbia did worse. California also sends a smaller share of its high-school graduates to college than all but three other states. One of its roughly 1,000 school districts, Los Angeles Unified, which happens to be the second-largest in the country, has just become the first to be investigated by the federal Office for Civil Rights about whether it adequately teaches pupils who have little or no English.
Eli Broad, a Los Angeles philanthropist（慈善家） who is trying to reform education, blames a combination of California’s dysfunctional（功能失调的） governance, with “elected school boards made up of wannabes and unions”（校董工会）, and the fact that the state’s teachers’ union is both more powerful and “more regressive”（更强大且更消极） than elsewhere. The California Teachers Association (CTA) is the biggest lobby in the state, having spent some $210m in the past decade—more than any other group— to intervene in California’s politics.

The CTA has used its money to defeat almost any reform that might have turned the standards into reality. It helped to defeat ballot（投票） measures that, for example, would have given California a school-voucher（代金券） system and changed the probation（试用期） period for teachers. It ensured that the state has “laughably（可笑的） easy teacher tests”, as Mr Petrilli puts it. It is also the biggest donor to the state’s Democratic Party.


Another factor is money. California’s infamous Proposition 13 of 1978 cut property taxes, the main source of revenue for municipalities（市政当局） and school districts. Other ballot measures, such as Proposition 98 in 1988, were meant to restore school spending, with horrendously complex funding formulas（方案，计划）. But although schools account for the largest part of California’s budget, California entered the recession ranking 46th in spending per pupil. It has the largest classrooms in the country, with 23.4 students per teacher in 2008, almost twice the national average. Schools in black and Latino districts fare much worse than those in white areas.

Now spending is being cut further, as California has to keep plugging budget holes（赌注预算漏洞）. Funding per pupil in the state has dropped almost 11% in the past two fiscal years, and is certain to drop further. This fiscal year（财政年度）, the school districts have been able to use federal funds from the stimulus programme to mitigate the effects. But those funds end in the fiscal year that starts in July.


Comments:
The literary criticism bases on the worse tendency of education. The speaker cites an example of California to identify that the revolution ends up with a failure if can’t be translated into results.

The writer enumerates that 2 factors pose the poor condition, which involve CTA and money. As illustrated above,“the CTA has used its money to defeat almost any reform that might have turned the standards into reality.”“spending is being cut further, as California has to keep plugging budget holes”.

In my opinion, the education of china may suffer from a similar problem like California. By providing a public education principally, the development of individuals is limited by the apparatus and other resources such as 60 students with per teacher, per small classroom. In some poor provinces, without the sufficient fiscal support, the circumstances are even more serious. So, I believe we should take rooted measures to reform the education beginning with the system.

lxklysUID: 2738043

The celebrity effect
词 句子 观点 短语
IN MARCH 1998 the Coca-Cola Bottling Company announced the appointment of a most unlikely new director to its board(董事会): Evander Holyfield, a former heavyweight boxing champion (pictured above), best-known for having part of his ear bitten off in a bout by a fellow boxer, Mike Tyson（描述性句子）. He was not the only top athlete at the time with a seat in the boardroom（在董事会任职）: Michael Jordan, a celebrated basketball player, was a director of Oakley, a sunglasses manufacturer. Other sports stars to try their hand（尝试） at directing corporate America in the past 25 years include Billie Jean King, a tennis player appointed to the board of Altria (then called Philip Morris) in 1999 and Nancy Lopez, a golfer, who became a director of J.M. Smucker, a jam-maker, in 2006.
Boards have also recruited from the ranks of Hollywood. Disney appointed Sidney Poitier to its board in 1994, for example. Deepak Chopra, an author and lifestyle guru（倡导者）, was recruited to the board of Men’s Wearhouse, a suit retailer, in 2004. Stretching(扩展，延伸) the definition of celebrity a bit, General “Stormin’” Norman Schwarzkopf was appointed a director by the Home Shopping Network in 1996. And you can take your pick（由你挑选） from scores（很多） of politicians-turned-directors, including Al Gore, a former vice-president and a member of Apple’s board since 2003.
Gerald Ford was a particularly enthusiastic collector of boardroom seats after he left the White House. While on the board of American Express he stunned（使震惊） his fellow directors by asking Harvey Golub, the chief executive at the time, to explain the difference between “equity” and “revenue”, according to Vicky Ward’s new book on Lehman Brothers, “The Devil’s Casino”. This was perhaps not so surprising for a man Lyndon Johnson once said had “played too much football with his helmet off”. But it prompts a broader thought about why companies recruit celebrity directors.
Michael Eisner, the boss of Disney when Mr. Poitier joined the board, may have been right to say that the actor’s “talent is more than screen deep,” and that his “election to our board brings us not only his exhaustive knowledge of the entertainment industry but the judgment and wisdom of an exceptional man.” Even so（即便如此）, it would seem a reasonable assumption that the lack of business nous（常识，机智） displayed by the late President Ford is more typical of the celebrity in the boardroom. So what is the point of having them?
Because they increase the value of the firms whose boards they join, apparently. According to “Reaching for the Stars: The Appointment of Celebrities to Corporate Boards”, a new study by four American-based economists, simply announcing that a celebrity is joining a board gives the company’s share price a boost（注意其表述）. Disney’s share price jumped by 4.2% on the day Mr. Poitier was appointed. But, for the more than 700 celebrity director appointments (out of over 70,000 board appointments in all) that the study examines during 1985-2006, the firms’ shares continued to outperform（胜过） significantly over（超过） the subsequent one, two and three years.
Why is this? In some cases—a former president, say—powerful connections and the ability to open the right doors were surely a factor. And, as Mr. Eisner claimed of Mr. Poitier, some celebrities may bring relevant experience (the study muddies（干扰） the waters（领域） somewhat by including several famous business people, such as Rupert Murdoch and Martha Stewart, within its definition of celebrity). On average（平均上）, the study found a bigger impact on share prices when celebrity directors had “related” experience than when they had none. Yet “unrelated” celebrity directors had a bigger impact on share prices than unrelated non-celebrities（可用于对比的写法）.
To explain this, the economists point to the “visibility effect”—that appointing a celebrity helps draw the attention of investors to a company which, all else being equal（在其他因素相同的前提下）, increases demand for its shares and thus its share price. Certainly, a celebrity director seems to increase the proportion of a firm’s shares bought by institutional investors (whom the economists think are especially prone to the visibility effect both directly and as a result of the greater attention paid by stockmarket analysts).
So, should companies respond to this study by picking a few directors at random from the pages of People magazine, or beating a path to（争先恐后） Brangelina Towers? It might work, at least for a while. On the other hand（转折词汇）, surely sooner or later investors will realise that if the appointment of a director who has nothing to offer but a famous name boosts a firm’s share price, it delivers（发出） a damning（毁灭的） verdict（意见） on the value of the rest of the board. Rather than a reason to cheer（不应该看做可喜可贺）, perhaps the celebrity effect on companies’ shares should be seen instead as an indicator that boards are failing to do their job properly and that they contribute little in return for their generous pay. Or indeed that professional investors, who ought to know better, are as star struck（追星族） as the readers of gossip magazines.

Commentary:
According to the celebrities, ones from the field of politics, athletics, even Hollywood, joining the broad of company, the speaker comments the phenomenon above both beneficial and detrimental.
As mentioned above, the celebrities can “increase the value of the firms whose boards they join”, own “powerful connections and the ability to open the right doors”, bring a bigger impact on the share prices, and the amplified profits of the company also identify it.
But, what can not be ruled out is that “picking a few directors at random from the pages of People magazine” is likely to bring some side effects. For example, contributing little but paid for generous causes the iniquity in distribution of wealth, a behavior may result in a passive attitude from other professional investors to job, which is really detrimental a company. Any way, I think appointing a celebrity as an indicator of a company should be considered discreetly; maybe the best way is to hire one as the face of a company.

lxklysUID: 2738043

commentary by lxklys


Racism and free speech种族主义和言论自由

Congress shall make no law...国会不能立法…

The downside（消极的） to the First Amendment第一修正案的消极一面

RADIO audiences in Kansas City and Springfield, Missouri, are used to being harangued（长篇大论﹑慷慨激昂﹑ 郑重其事且通常为义愤填膺的演讲）
by political commercials（政治广告） even this early in the electoral season. But nearly everyone has been shocked to hear the ads of Glenn Miller, a write-in candidate to replace the retiring Kit Bond in the Senate（参议院）. Mr. Miller’s ads are overtly（明显地，公然地，蓄意地） anti-Semitic（反对闪族人） and racist tirades（种族抨击）, complaining that “Jews control the media” and attacking whites for “watching the coons（黑人，贬） play ball” instead of fighting for their rights.
Even more shocking than the ads themselves is the fact that under federal law, radio stations are powerless to refuse to run the commercials or censor them in any way. Mr Miller’s status as a candidate, no matter how ridiculous, puts the ads under the protection of political speech, the highest level of the First Amendment.
Mr Miller was a master-sergeant（中士） in the army and a self-described redneck<红脖子(指颈脖晒红的美国南部贫苦农民,尤指其中观念狭隘保守者)> when he joined his first white racist group in 1974. He formed his own offshoot(旁系，支族) of the Ku Klux Klan which he later renamed the White Patriot Party because, as he later wrote, the Klan carried too many negative connotations（言外之意（包括字面意思之外的意义）. In 1984 he ran in the North Carolina Democratic primary for governor, taking great delight（以做某事为乐，尤指坏事） in provoking outrage while gaining publicity for his movement. He served three years in federal prison for declaring a paramilitary（准军事的） race war and for illegal possession of weapons. In a previous run for Congress he won a grand total of 23 votes.
Winning office is not, of course, the point for Mr Miller. His ads direct listeners to a website run by David Duke, a white supremacist and former Republican legislator. His campaign web page has little about his Senate race but a lot about various neo-Nazi, Confederate and other extremist causes. And because Mr Miller is registered as a write-in candidate his protected status will last beyond（迟于） Missouri’s primaries（初选） in August, until the November election in what will be one of the most closely-watched races of the year. The Missouri Senate race is one of the few opportunities for Democrats to pick up（获得） a Republican seat, and is shaping up（使形成） to be an epic battle（大型的争夺） between two of the state’s most powerful political dynasties.
One Kansas City station has begun airing（公开发表） disclaimers before Mr Miller’s ads explaining that its hands are tied. It may be that the price（代价） of free speech is to turn down the volume for 60 seconds.
Commentary
The news presents that a candidate of the senate, a totally redneck, once serving in prison for declaring the paramilitary war and illegal possession of weapons, takes the delights in provoking the public’s outrage once again. He utilizes the ads of election to acclaim his opinions about the anti-Semitic and anti-coon, an ads the TV station is powerless to cancel.
In my analysis, the downside of the speech freedom shows overtly in this event. Under the protection of laws, some celebrities such as politicians always exploit the medium to declare their personal views publicly, ones having a serious impact on some people referred to. On the other hand, the populace may be influenced to behave excessively that causes the riot.

诺诺米米UID: 2757304

真好 决定每日跟进~~

jaysevenUID: 2712311

楼主太牛了！楼主太伟大了！


P.S.   昨天老大HB突然说离开gter论坛，含泪看完了整篇文章，
       诺诺米米好像第一个回帖的耶，记住你了，哈哈

lxklysUID: 2738043

呵呵，居然有人回复呢，开心开心。诺诺米米，你也是10G的吗
13# 诺诺米米