economics阅读贴bylxklys

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呵呵，继续努力哈
14# jayseven

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DEBATE  information overload
生词 好词短语
好句 观点
About it: Technology users are discovering that the proliferation（迅速的繁殖，增生） of information tools, services, and channels makes managing their own personal and professional information increasingly difficult. A growing chorus（异口同声） of voices is sounding the alarm that information overload is diminishing people’s ability be effective（观点）. Are there better ways to manage the vast amounts of information assaulting（突袭） users on a daily basis（在每天的基础上）? What is the right balance between new tools and information streams（信息潮）, on the one hand, and minimizing the impact of information overload on the other? Are people losing their ability to reflect rather than just react?（很好的argu句型）
Background: “THE computer knows me as its enemy,” says John Maeda. “Everything I touch doesn't work.” Take those “plug-and-play” devices, such as printers and digital cameras, that any personal computer (PC) allegedly（声称地，断言地） recognises automatically as soon as they are plugged into an orifice（外孔） called a USB port at the back of the PC. Whenever Mr Maeda plugs something in, he says, his PC sends a long and incomprehensible error message from Windows, Microsoft's ubiquitous（无所不在的） operating system. But he knows from bitter experience that the gist of it is no.
At first glance, Mr Maeda's troubles might not seem very noteworthy（值得注意的）. Who has not watched Windows crash and reboot（重新启动） without provocation, downloaded endless anti-virus programs to reclaim a moribund（垂死的） hard disc, fiddled with（点击） cables and settings to hook up a printer, and sometimes simply given up?（句式好，用词精准，而且适合argu中用于分析）
Yet（然而，承上启下） Mr Maeda is not just any old technophobic user. He has a master's degree in computer science and a PhD in interface（联系装置） design, and is currently a professor in computer design at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He is, in short, one of the world's foremost computer geeks（电脑达人）. Mr Maeda concluded that if he, of all people, cannot master the technology needed to use computers effectively, it is time to declare a crisis. So, earlier this year, he launched a new research initiative called “Simplicity” at the MIT Media Lab. Its mission is to look for ways out of today's mess.
Mr Maeda has plenty of sympathizers（支持者）. “It is time for us to rise up with a profound demand,” declared the late Michael Dertouzos in his 2001 book, “The Unfinished Revolution”: “Make our computers simpler to use!” Donald Norman, a long-standing advocate of design simplicity, concurs（同意）（描述人物所采用的句型）. “Today's technology is intrusive（具侵略性） and overbearing. It leaves us with no moments of silence, with less time to ourselves, with a sense of diminished control over our lives,（关于技术很好的观点，可拿来做材料）” he writes in his book, “The Invisible Computer”. “People are analogue（对等的人）, not digital; biological, not mechanical. It is time for human-centred technology, a humane technology.”（好观点）
The information-technology (IT) industry itself is long past denial. Greg Papadopoulos, chief technologist at Sun Microsystems, a maker of powerful corporate computers, says that IT today is “in a state that we should be ashamed of; it's embarrassing.” Ray Lane, a venture（企业） capitalist at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, one of the most prominent technology financiers in Silicon Valley, explains: “Complexity is holding our industry back right now. A lot of what is bought and paid for doesn't get implemented because of complexity. Maybe this is the industry's biggest challenge.” Even Microsoft, which people like Mr Lane identify as a prime culprit（罪人）, is apologetic. “So far, most people would say that technology has made life more complex,” concedes Chris Capossela, the boss of Microsoft's desktop applications.
The economic costs of IT complexity are hard to quantify but probably exorbitant（过分的，惊人的）. The Standish Group, a research outfit（组织） that tracks（追踪,这词绝啦） corporate IT purchases, has found that 66% of all IT projects either fail outright（彻底的） or take much longer to install than expected because of their complexity. Among very big IT projects—those costing over $10m apiece—98% fall short（达不到）.
Gartner, another research firm, uses other proxies for complexity. An average firm's computer networks are down for（停止，关闭） an unplanned 175 hours a year, calculates Gartner, causing an average loss of over $7m. On top of that（除此之外）, employees waste an average of one week a year struggling with their recalcitrant（违规的） PCs. And itinerant（流动的） employees, such as salesmen, incur an extra $4,400 a year in IT costs, says the firm.
Tony Picardi, a boffin at IDC, yet another big research firm, comes up with perhaps the most frightening number. When he polled a sample of firms 15 years ago, they were spending 75% of their IT budget on new hardware and software and 25% on fixing the systems that they already had; now that ratio has been reversed—70-80% of IT spending goes on fixing things rather than buying new systems. According to Mr Picardi, this suggests that this year alone IT complexity will cost firms worldwide some $750 billion. Even this（转折）, however, does not account for the burden on consumers, whether measured in the cost of call-centres and help desks, in the amount of gadgets（小机器） and features never used because they are so byzantine, or(不管是，或是) in sheer frustration.
Why now?

Complaints about complex technology are, of course, nothing new. Arguably, IT has become more complex in each of the 45 years since the integrated circuit made its debut. But a few things have happened in the past three years that now add a greater sense of urgency.

The most obvious change is the IT bust that followed the dotcom boom of the late 1990s. After a decade of strong growth, the IT industry suddenly started shrinking（萎缩） in 2001 (see chart 1). In early 2000 it accounted for（表现） 35% of America's S&P 500 index; today its share is down to about 15%. “For the past three years, the tech industry's old formula—build it and they come—has no longer worked,” says Pip Coburn, a technology analyst at UBS, an investment bank. For technology vendors（小贩，卖主）, he thinks, this is the sort of trauma（创伤） that precedes a paradigm shift. Customers no longer demand “hot” technologies, but instead want “cold” technologies, such as integration software, that help them stitch together and simplify the fancy systems they bought during the boom years.

Steven Milunovich, an analyst at Merrill Lynch, another bank, offers a further reason why simplicity is only now becoming a big issue. He argues that the IT industry progresses in 15-year waves. In the first wave, during the 1970s and early 1980s, companies installed big mainframe computers; in the second wave, they put in PCs that were hooked up（与…相连） to “server” computers in the basement; and in the third wave, which is breaking now, they are beginning to connect every gadget that employees might use, from hand-held computers to mobile phones, to the internet.

The mainframe era, says Mr Milunovich, was dominated by proprietary（专利的） technology (above all, IBM's), used mostly to automate（使自动化） the back offices of companies, so the number of people actually working with it was small（经验）. In the PC era, de facto（实际上存在的，不论合法与否） standards (ie, Microsoft's) ruled, and technology was used for word processors and spreadsheets（空白表格程序） to make companies' front offices more productive, so the number of people using technology multiplied tenfold（十倍的）. And in the internet era, Mr Milunovich says, de jure（法律上） standards (those agreed on by industry consortia) are taking over（接管，继承）, and every single employee will be expected to use technology, resulting in another tenfold increase in numbers.

Moreover, the boundaries between office, car and home will become increasingly blurred and will eventually disappear altogether. In rich countries, virtually the entire population will be expected to be permanently connected to the internet, both as employees and as consumers. This will at last make IT pervasive and ubiquitous, like electricity or telephones before it, so the emphasis will shift towards making gadgets and networks simple to use.（观点：由于IT的大面积使用，决定了它设备和网络将趋向简单化）

UBS's Mr Coburn adds a demographic observation. Today, he says, some 70% of the world's population are “analogues”, who are “terrified by technology”, and for whom the pain of technology “is not just the time it takes to figure out new gadgets but the pain of feeling stupid at each moment along the way”. Another 15% are “digital immigrants”, typically thirty-somethings who adopted technology as young adults; and the other 15% are “digital natives”, teenagers and young adults who have never known and cannot imagine life without IM (instant messaging, in case you are an analogue). But a decade from now, Mr Coburn says, virtually（实际上） the entire population will be digital natives or immigrants, as the ageing（成熟的） analogues convert to（改变） avoid social isolation. Once again, the needs of these converts point to a hugely increased demand for simplicity.（观点2：由于对社会隔绝看法的改变也要求电脑技术变得简单。）

The question is whether this sort of technology can ever become simple, and if so, how. This survey will analyze the causes of technological complexity both for firms and for consumers, evaluate the main efforts toward simplification by IT and telecom vendors today, and consider what the growing demands for simplicity mean for these industries. A good place to start is in the past.

背景：

1.先论述一个博士的案例来引出如今的IT技术的复杂化带来的不便，因而需要简化的这一主题；

2.接着引用其他电脑伤人的论述，以及因其复杂化而花在此上面的修理费，员工差遣费的巨大，导致没有足够的钱开发新技术的例子，从电脑商的角度来说明必须简化的必要性；

3.接着引用专家对电脑潮的3个阶段，以及电脑普及人群的扩大化的例子，从满足人的需要的角度来说明简化的必要性。

4.接着作者又发散，说明不仅简化是很重要的事情，而且如何简化也很重要。

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请注意帖子开头的格式~加油~

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17# lxklys

Meditor:Our first debate in this series involved a vital（极重要的，必不可少的） area of public policy. For this second debate the focus is firmly on the individual, and the impact of technology on our lives. The question at hand should make us all examine our own use of technology, and perhaps produce surprising answers.

We all use technology. Everyone reading or taking part in this debate is of course connected to the internet. For that, at least, let us be thankful.

But even as it opens up extraordinary new possibilities, is technology making our lives too complicated?（观点） I am able to write this opening statement far away from my desk,
courtesy of（承蒙某人某事的帮助） wireless connectivity, on a hotel veranda（走廊） overlooking the English Channel on a Sunday morning: miraculous（奇迹般的） simplicity! （wonderful！！！）Yet my wife, whose birthday we are celebrating here, may view it differently: an unfortunate complication of her special day. This debate is about a question many of us grapple with（努力克服的） on a daily basis.

Two dimensions of the issue emerge from（出来，现出） the thoughtful opening statements.（很好的承上启下） First, Richard Szafranski, a partner at Toffler Associates, raises（好词） the broad impact of technology on our environment: its contribution to global warming, the creation of new chemical compounds with uncertain impact on life and health, the invention of weapons of mass destruction.（对broad impact的具体阐述，写得十分惊厥） Surely, he argues, such things complicate our lives.（科学技术对环境的影响）

Second, and more palpably, there is the matter of the breakneck （快得危险的）development of personal technology. Mr Szafranski argues that the abundance of this stuff is such that we suffer from "over-choice" as well as "surplus complexity": all those ring tones（包围着这些声音） to choose from and personal devices to be baffled（被阻止） by. Far from simplifying our lives, choosing between so many options is hard and increasingly complicated work.（个人配置的过快增长所带来的不良影响：挑选更复杂）

John Maeda, president elect of the Rhode Island School of Design, accepts that technology can add complexity to our lives, and we can all empathise with tales of maddening（使人气恼的） computer crashes and infuriating（发怒的） printer glitches（小故障）. But, he claims, it also has the capacity to remove even greater complexity that existed beforehand: who wouldn't grapple with a fidgety（烦躁不安的） hearing-aid（助听器） if in the end it overcomes deafness?. Furthermore, he believes, we are tech "explorers", experimenting and adapting technologies to our needs over time: he raises the prospect that we are entering a time of simplification, a "Renaissance of design-led development." In short, "the bad rap（警告声，敲门声） given to technologies today will be only temporary."

Where does the balance lie? That is what I hope this debate will clarify. Mr Maeda reckons there is 90% upside and 10% downside; Mr Szafranski, without putting a number on it, thinks it's the other way around. What do you think?

One last word before the debate begins. You have, rightly, on previous occasions looked closely and critically at the wording（措辞，言语） of the propositions（观点，见解）. In this case, as Mr Szafranski notes, it might be objected that technology didn't "promise" anything, though I think it's probably fair to say that many people assumed (and tech companies routinely claim) that its purpose is to simplify not complicate. "It didn't work," asserts Mr Szafranski. Or did it?

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19# lxklys

Proposer: Standing back(回顾过去), we now can be fairly certain that the science and engineering that enabled humans to create today's engines of industrialization, electrification, physics, medicine, genetics and the appliances of the information age also added significant complexity to our lives.（观点，技术的发展既带来了好处，又增加了复杂性） Technology warmed（好词） the planet, added pollutants to the atmosphere and oceans, affected life forms by changing the background magnetic（带磁性的） field (including adding increased extremely low-frequency radiation), enabled nuclear weapons and created thousands of chemical compounds that can help or hurt life.（关于科技的不良影响的观点，收了） One cannot conclude that the convergent（汇聚的） effects—social, environmental, political, economic, legal, psychological（一般分领域的时候，可以按这些领域展开）—of these technological developments simplified living or our lives. Technology has failed to simplify our lives.

Coping with the challenges caused by a warming planet will not be simple. Knowing（以后可以和considering换着用了） the health effects—the effects on humans and other living organisms—of various pollutants and combinations of pollutants and appropriately dealing with them will not be simple.（接下来对这个观点进行阐述） Understanding the biological consequences of changed magnetic fields and increased point and area sources of radiation is not uncomplicated（学习这种写法）. The problems associated with nuclear weapons' proliferation（生殖，激增，扩散） are only less complex than the problems that would arise from the use of such weapons. And it becomes increasingly difficult to assay the interactions, the lag times（间隔时间） and the health consequences of the chemicals we ingest, even those we consume intentionally. Simpler lives? No.（以温室效应对人们健康状况的影响为例来说明解决这些技术带来的问题并不容易）

Dealing with any one of these challenges is not simple; they are multi-dimensional and have converged（汇聚） and co-exist（并存）. "Technology"—shorthand（简略的表达方式） for the fruits（成果） of science and engineering—and its convergent unintended and intended consequences have complicated our lives.

Take some familiar but trivial examples. The technologies that enable mass customization（订做）, the internet and wireless devices and their applications, but a small sample, cause humans two problems that complicate our lives immensely. First, over-choice. Second, surplus complexity. Over-choice describes the human response to alternatives and variations so numerous, so potentially satisfying and so complex that humans can no longer decide easily.（对over-choice的定义，很好很强大） "Surplus complexity" is unnecessary and unwanted complexity.

We—hundreds of millions of us and growing—embrace the very technologies that make our lives and our relationships more difficult and fill many of our waking moments with activity. We love—to the point of gluttony（暴食）—to communicate, play, invent, learn, imagine and acquire. Information technology has given us tools to do all of those anywhere and round the clock. We are awash（被淹没的） in the benefits that high-bandwidth fixed and mobile wireless communications, email, text messages, pictures, games, data and information give us, including instant access to thousands of products. The seductive（诱人的） ease with which we can engage in any and all of those activities, or quests（搜索） or endeavours（努力） makes it difficult and stressful to not be overwhelmed by choices. Choosing takes time and our time is not unlimited. Devices and applications that save us labour in one area may merely allow us, and sometimes seem to compel（强迫） us, to invest labour in other areas.（这段写得相当惊艳！！！再次阐述了技术带给人的复杂性：只不过从过多的技术产品使得人们选择的时间过长，并且使得人们浪费过多时间在聊天工具上，特别是最后结尾的那个总结十分到位，膜拜膜拜）

We say or hear, "I must do my email tonight, or by tomorrow I'll have over 600 to read." We want to buy a pot. Search on "pottery" and get 254,000,000 results. We want to find the John Li we met at a conference. Search on "John Li" and get 8,600,000 results（写例子的排比手法，学着！！）. Do I do email, narrow the searches, eat dinner, pick up my laundry（洗好的衣服） or call a friend? Because technology has spawned numerous complex variations I must repeatedly go through the act of evaluating and choosing — a labour of deciding（原来是用来技术在另一方面耗费了劳力的观点啊）. Technology has imposed the encumbrance of over-choice on us.

Over-choice is made more likely and burdensome by the complexity resident（居民） in each of the choices that are presented to us. There are hundreds of choices within the seemingly simple one of getting a cellular（多孔的） telephone and choosing a provider and a plan. Some phones also are Pocket PCs with CDMA and GSM, video-players, music-players, web browsers, calculators and so forth. One must decide where and when the complexity becomes surplus. Choosing ring tones from among the surplus complexity evident in the thousands of tones available is almost unfathomable（高深莫测的） over-choice.（以手机的多功能导致找出通话键都很困难为例，指出复杂性带来的不便）

Businesses know that solutions to over-choice, on the one hand, and engineered surplus complexity, on the other, can produce revenue（从商业角度说这个带来的影响）. Their solutions may complicate the problems. It may be that few consumers have or take the time to read a website's terms of services, privacy policy or licensing agreement before hitting "I agree." The willing or inadvertent（漫不经心的） disclosure（透露，公开） of information about behaviour and the data bases that record past searches create the potential for precise marketing. Behavioural marketing, for example, uses data from multiple sources, including data in the public domain and data acquired by a target's past web searches, to push tailored（适应于） products and services. More choices. When surplus complexity is engineered into a product—of a product's, say, 41 features, the consumer only wanted two—consumers pay for unnecessary and unused features. Unbundling（未绑定） is seen by some businesses or some industries as such radical（基本的） customisation that it is priced prohibitively. We live in the multifaceted（多方面） bundles that technology has enabled.（主要说明因为技术的复杂性而导致说明书更难懂，造成买者不会安装业务时，只会轻易按同意；再从如今很多捆绑业务导致消费者不得不白白付很多钱这两方面来说明复杂性带来的消极影响）

The system as a whole, the system we create and sustain and live in,（好句） now has so many and so complex separate parts that understanding consequential interactions, potential outcomes—intended and unintended—and long-term effects is more difficult than ever in human history. One might argue that the genesis of problems like over-choice and surplus complexity is in human frailty（弱点） or human wants satisfied by technology, but, without technology, more simplicity would endure. Technology is the beneficial culprit（犯错者） that allowed us to do this.

One cannot conclude that humans making bad choices are the real culprit unless one ascribes to the unborn—past and future—the ability to choose. Technology, personified as defendant, could probably prove "I made no promises." Just so, but the issue under consideration is less any specific promise asserted than it was the promising possibilities of making our lives simpler that lured us(注意less…than的用法), as we humans employed technology to solve problems and create opportunities.

It did not work.

lxklysUID: 2738043

20# lxklys

Opposition:
Technology exists to advance and enhance our world in new ways. Sometimes it lets us add a new capability to our daily routine like the guilty pleasure of SMS-ing during a boring meeting. In other cases technology literally takes the pain away, as anyone with a successful hip(时髦的) replacement can attest. Adopting any technology is a conscious act of adding complexity to our lives. However while adding new complexities, a successful technology is able to at least dampen and at times completely remove the greater complexities that existed prior.

Fitting a hearing aid to your ear on a daily basis adds complexity, but the benefit of being able to hear significantly better makes life simpler. Keeping the fire of your Blackberry constantly lit drives you crazy, but your BB lets you be CEO while slipping away（溜走） to attend your son's soccer game. Automobiles keep you stuck in traffic and expend excessive energy, but these same technologies can transport you to the mountains or beach for repose.（对上面的观点一一做出了反驳，经典！！！） When looking at your life overall, there should be no doubt that technology has simplified many aspects of your existence. It has given you options to live your life how you want and when you want in ways that were never before possible. And truly, what is more simple than being free?（作者举出例子来一一反驳上面的观点，认为技术实质上是简化了我们的生活）

The bad rap given to technologies today will be only temporary. Yes my wireless Bluetooth headset sometimes forgets that my iPhone exists even when they are only a millimeter apart. Yes a few months ago my computer crashed for the first time in three years and I lost all my data. Yes my laser（激光器） printer and I will dance an odd lovers game of "I could have sworn I told you to print but you don't seem to notice me.（这段排比实在惊艳！！！！作者用了欲扬先抑的手法，原来写作手法也是可以贯通的呀！！！崇敬！！）" But we are in a transitional（转变的） period where technologies are brittle（易损坏的） not because they are failing per se（本质上） — they are just new and experimental. And yes, we are all the unlikely guinea pigs that are happier on some days than others. Do you think the people that first owned and drove automobiles lived untroubled lives? I think not, but the benefits likely outweighed any setbacks otherwise we would still be riding horses today.（作者总结那些技术带来的不便只是暂时的，并与人们第一次使用汽车也会遇到问题来做对比）

Remember that computers did not really take off（腾飞） until less than ten years ago. They were these big, ugly, and clunky（厚重的） boxes with even bigger "TV sets" attached to them. Now within a size smaller than my fist a computer that is hundreds of times more powerful sits within my palm. And within a few months it will become twice as powerful. In the history of humankind, there have never been similar technological advances happening at the incredible rate of change today. The glitches（小故障） are there because we are all explorers, and just haven't been told we are thus so.（再次用电脑开发速度的奇快无比来说明这些小故障只是暂时的，因为人类智慧是无穷的）

Recognise simplicity as being about two goals realised simultaneously:the saving of time to realise efficiencies, and later wasting the time that you have gained on some humanly pursuit. Thus true simplicity in life is one part technology, and the other part away from technology. Much confusion lies today in the fact that technology has invaded many of our recreational（娱乐的，消遣的） activities such as music listening and video viewing. Thus as explorers in technology, we have ventured（冒险） out of just the "got-to-have" categories of pacemakers（先导者） and other life-saving necessities, into the "nice-to-have" categories of iPods and other life-styling gadgetry. Our thirst for exotic（额外的） experiences in technology only pushes us further down the path of increasing unpredictability. Engaging new technologies is about embracing（采用，employ，以后就不用老说use了） new inventions and the passion for cultural advancement — it is a game usually only reserved for the young that we can now play no matter how old we are.（每个人都有想要下载更多好玩东西的欲望，以及想使用新技术的想法，而这些技术的发展正是弥补了我们的需求，并不是说它浪费了人们的时间。）

We voluntarily let technology enter our lives in the infantile state that it currently exists, and the challenge is to wait for it to mature（与infantile对比） to something we can all be proud of. Patience is a virtue I am told, and I await the many improvements that lie ahead. To say that technology is failing to simplify our lives misses（就不用老用neglect了） the point that in the past decade we have lived in an era of breakneck innovation. This pace is fortunately slowing and industries are retrenching so that design-led approaches can take command（指挥） to give root to more meaningful technology experiences. There are advanced developments underway at MIT, CMU, and Stanford for improving user interfaces（界面）, data visualisation, network reliability, and energy management that will reduce the 10% of downsides we feel today compared with the 90% of upsides brought on by both life-saving and life-styling technologies.（说明我们需要等待技术从不成熟走向成熟）

The conveniences gained of extended life spans, click-to-buy anything off of the web, and even online dating are all concrete examples of enhancement that vastly simplify our lives. They make our lives more complex in addition: a longer life means more to think about, an online purchase can come in the wrong colour, and a virtual date can go awry（出错的）. Do the positives outweigh the negatives? Often you will find that the answer is: Yes. When any newer technology is concerned, you are adopting the cause of innovation and as such should expect some turbulence（骚乱） along the way. In the near future we will see a renaissance in design-led technology developments that will reduce the bumpiness（颠簸） we currently experience to give way to simplicity every day. Technology will unite with design and the arts in unprecedented harmony such that not only will our lives be simplified, but more importantly satisfying.（再次说明技术带来的便利，然后对上文提出的观点进行反驳，是因为时间多了才会乱想，而且当谈到新技术的时候，你就必须同时意料到它会伴有相应的缺点出现，但随着技术的发展，还是会解决的。）

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commentary by lxklys

Protecting the weakest保护最弱势群体

The recession may hurt America’s vulnerable children
经济危机可能会危害美国弱小的儿童

生词 好词好短语 副词 好句

OVER the past few years, a growing number of America’s parentless children have found homes. In 2008 there were 463,000 children in foster(通过收养而产生家庭关系的) care, a system where the government places orphans（孤儿） and children with parents who are abusive or unable to take care of them in the care of guardians（监护人）. That is 11% down since 2002, and great news. But experts worry the trend might now go into reverse.

Some welfare advocates fear that the bad economy may cause parents with frayed（易激动的，紧张的） nerves to abuse and neglect their children, and even cause some to abandon them. Already, several hospitals across the country have reported an increase in the frequency and severity（严重） of injuries from child abuse.

The most recent national data on child welfare available dates from September 2008, before the recession was in full throttle（节流阀）; data from 2009 won’t be reported until later this year. But there is some question about whether the data, when reported, will even be accurate. Many states and counties, in an attempt to（以后就不用直接用for,这个洋气） cope with their fiscal straits（学习这种修饰性语句）, are considering cutting down on child-welfare services, such as benefits for foster parents and the number of social workers they employ. The average workload（工作量） of caseworkers（社会工作者） had already increased by 7% between 2006 and 2007, says Mary Hansen, of American University in Washington, DC. With more budget cuts, there will be fewer caseworkers to take notice of abuse and neglect, she says, and it will be more difficult to find someone to report problems to, potentially skewing the collection data.

In the meantime（好的过渡）, more parents are trying to keep their families intact（完整的）. New York Foundling（引用著述的方法）, an agency in New York, runs a crisis centre, where parents can leave their children for up to three weeks. Requests for beds increased 20% in the last year. Safe Families, a non-profit outfit that places children in temporary homes with volunteer families until jobless parents can get back on their feet（经济上独立）, saw the number of children it serviced triple in 2009, and it expects that number to double again in 2010.

Most people are asking for help from Safe Families, says the organisation’s founder, David Anderson, because they don’t want to risk losing custody（监管）, as they would if they put their kids into foster care. Thankfully, the recession has actually spurred（刺激） more volunteers to come forward, says Mr Anderson.

Commentary
The speaker asserts that a growing number of America’s parentless children finding homes may turn into reverse with the recession of economics. According to the statements of the experts and reports of news, the frequency and severity of injuries from child abuse occurred even oftener under the conditions. However many families attempt to protect their children as a custodian, which prompt them to send their children to the safe outfits for a limited time and help them get through the crisis.

I think this assertion about the recession of the economics for the vulnerable children is especial concerned with the influence of this crisis, from a unique perspective. The speaker deduces what parents suffer from in a crisis may have a downside impact on the children, such as abuse, even injury. So, in my opinion, to protect children not only depends on the policy, but also the development of economics, to some extent.

lxklysUID: 2738043

Listening to (and Saving) the World’s Languages

生词 好词好短语

好句  好观点

The chances of overhearing(偷听到) a conversation in Vlashki, a variant（变种） of Istro-Romanian, are greater in Queens than in the remote mountain villages in Croatia that immigrants now living in New York left years ago.

At a Roman Catholic Church in the Morrisania section of the Bronx, Mass is said once a month in Garifuna, an Arawakan language that originated with descendants of African slaves shipwrecked(使遭受海难) near St. Vincent in the Caribbean and later exiled（流放） to Central America（注意语法结构）. Today, Garifuna is virtually as common in the Bronx and in Brooklyn as in Honduras and Belize.

And Rego Park, Queens, is home（表示抽象意义的家园时，不用冠词） to Husni Husain, who, as far he knows, is the only person in New York who speaks Mamuju, the Austronesian language he learned growing up（伴随着长大） in the Indonesian province of West Sulawesi. Mr. Husain, 67, has nobody to talk to, not even his wife or children.

“My wife is from Java, and my children were born in Jakarta — they don’t associate with the Mamuju,” he said. “I don’t read books in Mamuju. They don’t publish any. I only speak Mamuju when I go back or when I talk to my brother on the telephone.”

These are not just some of the languages that make New York the most linguistically diverse city in the world. They are part of a remarkable trove（珍藏品） of endangered（快要绝种的） tongues that have taken root in New York（很好的论点） — languages born in every corner of the globe and now more commonly heard in various corners of New York than anywhere else.

While there is no precise count, some experts believe New York is home to as many as 800 languages — far more than the 176 spoken by students in the city’s public schools or the 138 that residents of Queens, New York’s most diverse borough（行政区）, listed on their 2000 census forms.

“It is the capital of language density in the world,” said Daniel Kaufman, an adjunct professor of linguistics at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. “We’re sitting in an endangerment hot spot where we are surrounded by languages that are not going to be around even in 20 or 30 years.”

In an effort to keep those voices alive, Professor Kaufman has helped start a project, the Endangered Language Alliance, to identify and record dying languages, many of which have no written alphabet, and encourage native speakers to teach them to compatriots.

“It’s hard to use a word like preserve with a language,” said Robert Holman, who teaches at Columbia and New York Universities and is working with Professor Kaufman on the alliance. “It’s not like putting jelly（果冻） in a jar. A language is used. Language is consciousness. Everybody wants to speak English, but those lullabies（催眠曲） that allow you to go to sleep at night and dream — that’s what we’re talking about.”

With national languages and English encroaching（侵犯，侵入） on the linguistic isolation of remote islands and villages, New York has become a Babel in reverse — a magnet （磁铁）for immigrants and their languages.

New York is such a rich laboratory for languages on the decline that the City University Graduate Center is organizing an endangered-languages program. “The quickening（加快） pace of language endangerment and extinction is viewed by many linguists as a direct consequence of globalization（全球化的影响）,” said Juliette Blevins, a distinguished linguist hired by City University to start the program.

In addition to dozens of Native American languages, vulnerable foreign languages that researchers say are spoken in New York include Aramaic, Chaldic and Mandaic from the Semitic family; Bukhari (a Bukharian Jewish language, which has more speakers in Queens than in Uzbekistan or Tajikistan); Chamorro (from the Mariana Islands); Irish Gaelic; Kashubian (from Poland); indigenous Mexican languages; Pennsylvania Dutch; Rhaeto-Romanic (spoken in Switzerland); Romany (from the Balkans); and Yiddish. Researchers plan to canvass（游说）a tiny Afghan neighborhood in Flushing, Queens, for Ormuri, which is believed to be spoken by a small number of people in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

The Endangered Language Alliance will apply field techniques usually employed in exotic and remote foreign locales as it starts its research in the city’s vibrant（鲜明的）
ethnic enclaves（飞地）.

“Nobody had gone from area to area looking for endangered languages in New York City spoken by immigrant populations,” Professor Kaufman said.

The United Nations keeps an atlas（地图册）of languages facing extinction, and U.N. experts as well as linguists generally agree that a language will probably disappear in a generation or two when the population of native speakers is both too small and in decline. Language attrition（磨损，摩擦，消磨） has also been hastened（加快） by war, ethnic cleansing and compulsory schooling in a national tongue（可以分析如果都教授统一课程的话所带来的消极影响）.

Over the decades in the secluded（与他人隔离的） northeastern Istrian Peninsula along the Adriatic Sea, Croatian began to replace Vlashki, spoken by the Istrians, what is described as Europe’s smallest surviving ethnic group. But after Istrians began immigrating to Queens, many to escape grinding（令人难以忍受的） poverty, they largely abandoned Croatian and returned to speaking Vlashki.

“Whole villages were emptied,” said Valnea Smilovic, 59, who came to the United States in the 1960s with her parents and her brother and sister. “Most of us are here now in this country.”

Mrs. Smilovic still speaks in Vlashki with her mother, 92, who knows little English, as well as her siblings. “Not too much, though,” Mrs. Smilovic said, because her husband speaks only Croatian and her son, who was born in the United States, speaks English and a smattering of（一点点）Croatian.

“Do I worry that our culture is getting lost?” Mrs. Smilovic asked. “As I get older, I’m thinking more about stuff like that. Most of the older people die away and the language dies with them.”

Several years ago, one of her cousins, Zvjezdana Vrzic, an Istrian-born adjunct professor of linguistics atNew York University,organized a meeting in Queens[/url] about preserving Vlashki. She was stunned by the turnout（出席） of about 100 people.

“A language reflects a singular（异常的，奇特的） nature of a people speaking it,” said Professor Vrzic, who recently published an audio Vlashki phrasebook and is working on an online Vlashki-Croatian-English dictionary.

Istro-Romanian is classified by Unesco as severely endangered, and Professor Vrzic said she believed that the several hundred native speakers who live in Queens outnumbered（在数量上超过某人） those in Istria. “Nobody tried to teach it to me,” she said. “It was not thought of as something valuable, something you wanted to carry on to another generation.”

A few fading foreign languages have also found niches in New York and the country. In northern New Jersey, Neo-Aramaic, rooted in the language of Jesus and the Talmud, is still spoken by Syrian immigrants and is taught at Syriac Orthodox churches in Paramus and Teaneck.

The Rev. Eli Shabo speaks Neo-Aramaic at home, and his children do, too, but only “because I’m their teacher,” he said.

Will their children carry on the language? “If they marry another person of Syriac background, they may,” Father Shabo said. “If they marry an American, I’d say no.”

And on Long Island, researchers have found several people
fluent in Mandaic(注意这种修辞方法), a Persian variation of Aramaic spoken by a few hundred people around the world. One of them, Dakhil Shooshtary, 76, a retired jeweler who settled on Long Island from Iran 45 years ago, is compiling（收集并编辑） a Mandaic dictionary.

For Professor Kaufman, the quest for speakers of disappearing languages has sometimes involved serendipity（全然无意中所有惊奇发现）. After making a fruitless trip in 2006 to Indonesia to find speakers of Mamuju, he attended a family wedding two years ago in Queens. Mr. Husain happened to be sitting next to him. Wasting no time, he has videotaped（将节目录到带子上）Mr. Husain speaking in his native tongue.

“This is maybe the first time that anyone has recorded a video of the language being spoken,” said Professor Kaufman, who founded a Manhattan research center, the Urban Field Station for Linguistic Research, two years ago.

He has also recruited Daowd I. Salih, 45, a refugee from Darfur who lives in New Jersey and is a personal care assistant at a home for the elderly, to teach Massalit, a tribal（部落的） language, to a linguistic class at New York University（长句！！！用得惊叹））. They are meticulously（精致的，精细的） creating a Massalit lexicography to codify grammar, definitions and pronunciations.

“Language is identity（啥意思？）,” said Mr. Salih, who has been in the United States for a decade. “So many African tribes in Darfur lost their languages. This is the land of opportunity, so these students can help us write this language instead of losing it.”

Speakers of Garifuna, which is being displaced in Central America by Spanish and English, are striving to keep it alive in their New York neighborhoods. Regular classes have sprouted（产生，萌芽） at the Yurumein House Cultural Center in the Bronx, and also in Brooklyn, where James Lovell, a public school music teacher, leads a small Garifuna class at the Biko Transformation Center in East Bushwick.

Mr. Lovell, who came to New York from Belize in 1990, said his oldest children, 21-year-old twin boys, do not speak Garifuna. “They can get along speaking Spanish or English, so there’s no need to as far as they’re concerned,” he said, adding that many compatriots feel “they will get nowhere with their Garifuna culture, so they decide to assimilate.”

But as he witnessed his language fading among his friends and his family, Mr. Lovell decided to expose his younger children to（expose…to原来后可接名词形式，学着！！而且很native） their native culture. Mostly through simple bilingual songs that he accompanies with gusto on his guitar, he is teaching his two younger daughters, Jamie, 11, and Jazelle, 7, and their friends.

“Whenever they leave the house or go to school, they’re speaking English,” Mr. Lovell said. “Here, I teach them their history, Garifuna history. I teach them the songs, and through the songs, I explain to them what it’s saying. It’s going to give them a sense of self, to know themselves. The fact that they’re speaking the language is empowerment in itself.”

Commentary：
In this news, the speaker states a phenomenon about some languages from the tribal fading. With the globalization and the immigration, the emigrated people, especially their progenies, can’t speak their native language. Through the researches and surveys the professors make, they find what can be explained the fading mainly involves in these: to adapt to the new environment better, immigrated people have to assimilate, for the surroundings changed and they will go nowhere with their own language.
To protect the fading ones, many linguistic professors with their students take actions to relieve this peril. They founded some outfits, made the survey in tribes of other countries, and videotaped the native language, the cherished resources. Besides the effort of professors and students, the immigrated also tried their best to improve this condition, such as teaching their generation their own language in their home.
Anyway, in my opinion, facing with this condition above, what we should do is to videotape the language well, but not take the forced measures by government. And the immigrated themselves must pay attention to their cultural continuity.

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支持好贴！   \(^o^)/~

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Immigration Advocates Rally for Change

新词 好词好短语

好句 观点

WASHINGTON — In protests fueled by anger over a tough anti-illegal immigrant law in Arizona, tens of thousands of demonstrators joined marches and rallies Saturday in cities across the country, calling on(号召，请求) Congress to pass an immigrationoverhaul（彻底检查，大修）.

In Los Angeles, the police said the crowd had peaked（好词） at 50,000. Protesters numbered（竟然可以这样用！！！） 25,000 in Dallas, more than 10,000 in Chicago and Milwaukee, in the thousands in San Francisco and here in Washington, D.C., （一连串描述number的句子，很好很强大）according to the police and independent estimates. Organizers said rallies and vigils（守夜） were held in more than 70 places around the country.(这两段都是在讲抗议情况in Washington and other places)

In Washington, Representative Luis V. Gutierrez, Democrat of Illinois, was arrested after staging（举行） a sit-in on the sidewalk in front of the White House with about three dozen other people, in front of a crowd of thousands.

At a rally before he was arrested, Mr. Gutierrez, speaking in English and in Spanish, evoked memories of the civil rights movement of the 1960s.

“There are moments in which you say, ‘We will escalate(升级，扩大) this struggle,’ ” he said. “Today they will put handcuffs on us. But one day we will be free at last in the country we love.”（个人很喜欢的句子）

In all, 35 people were arrested in the sit-in, the United States Park Police said.

At rally after rally across the nation, protesters chanted “shame, shame, Arizona,” and carried signs saying, “Todos Somos Arizona,” or “We are All Arizona.” （到此为止，通过描述抗议的整体形势和某些个人的情况，来引出下文）

The bigger demonstrations were far larger（large在此的修饰作用） than planners had anticipated in March, when the events were first announced. The protests were originally called by immigrant advocates who had set May 1 as the deadline for Congress to introduce overhaul legislation that would include measures to give legal status to millions of illegal immigrants.（长句的写法！！！）

But organizers said the Arizona legislation, which was signed into law April 23, had been a watershed （分水岭）event for disparate（迥然不同的） advocate organizations, transforming them into something akin to（近似于）
a civil rights movement with a national profile.

The Arizona law made it a crime to be present in the state without legal immigration status and authorized the police to question people about their status based on a suspicion that they might be illegal immigrants.（对于这个law的具体描述）

Supporters of the law, including Gov. Jan Brewer of Arizona, a Republican, said the state had to act because the federal government had failed to enforce the immigration laws. Critics across the country said the law would lead to racial profiling（种族歧视的特征） and spread fear in immigrant communities. （不同党派的人对这个law的看法）

In Los Angeles, protesters marched through the streets and held a crowded rally downtown, just down the street from the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels.

Demonstrators waved American flags and signs, including one that said: “We Latinos are the Jews of the 21st century.” Mayor Antonio R. Villaraigosa told the crowd that a federal immigration overhaul was long overdue.

“Let me be clear about those laws that make suspects out of people based on the color of their skin,” Mr. Villaraigosa said. “They have no place in our great country.”

Cardinal Roger M. Mahony of Los Angeles drew cheers when he said, “Everyone in God’s eyes is legal.”

“Every time we have an economic downturn, there is a new attack on immigrants,” Cardinal Mahony said. （经济竟然和移民问题有联系！！！）

One Los Angeles protester, Dorien Grunbaum, 67, a teacher at a community college in the city,（注意这种描述方法） said she was there “primarily to support the immigrants in Arizona. I’m disgusted by what’s happening there,” Ms. Grunbaum said.（这几段介绍老百姓对此这个法律的态度）

No overhaul legislation has been introduced in Congress, and President Obama said last week that lawmakers “may not have the appetite” for a volatile（反复无常的） debate on immigration this year. A group of Democratic senators（参议员） on Thursday presented an outline for an overhaul bill, written primarily by Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York. （政府对于移民法律的修改的态度）

In Washington, Mr. Gutierrez sat crossed-legged on the sidewalk in front of the White House at about 3 p.m., holding a small American flag and wearing a white T-shirt with red letters that read, “Arrest me not my friends.” The protesters each held letters that spelled out the message, “Obama, stop deporting our families.”

Mr. Gutierrez was handcuffed behind his back with plastic cuffs by the Park Police, and he walked in silence when an officer led him away（带走）
along the black wrought-iron fence in front of the White House. Among others arrested with him were Jaime Contreras, director for Washington, D.C., of the Service Employees International Union; Joshua Hoyt, Ali Noorani, Deepak Bhargava, and Gustavo Torres, leaders of immigrant advocate organizations; and Gregory Cendana, president of the United States Student Association.

The protesters were arrested for violations（违背） of a regulation requiring people to keep moving when they pass in front of the White House, said Sergeant David Schlosser, a spokesman for the Park Police.

In Chicago, Mr. Obama’s hometown, thousands of people marched through downtown with signs that said, “Being brown is not a crime” and “Hey Obama! Don’t deport my mama.”

Many of the Chicago protesters expressed frustration at what they saw as the president’s lack of action on immigration.

Dulce Blanco, 48, was at the rally with a church group. She said she voted for Mr. Obama after attending a meeting where he said he would pass immigration reform. “If they don’t pass reform, we won’t vote for Obama again,” she said in Spanish.

Guadalupe Concepcion, a 22-year-old student in Chicago, began to cry during one of the speeches. She said she had been an illegal immigrant until she married her husband and that her parents faced discrimination because they are not here legally.

“The Arizona law is just plain racist,” she said. “It happened with African-Americans in the past, and now they want to do the same thing with us.”

Addressing the Chicago crowd, the Rev. Jesse Jackson encouraged a boycott of Arizona, saying the law would encourage racial profiling. “Arizona has become the Selma,” he said. “It is a showdown.”

In downtown Dallas, demonstrators gathered at the Cathedral Shrine of the Virgin of Guadalupe, named for the patroness of Mexico, and marched to City Hall. Many carried American flags, or draped them over their shoulders. （这几段讲的则是对政府不作为现象的群众反映）

Among the widening reverberations(回响，反射) from the Arizona law, the Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, a historically black organization whose members included Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Justice Thurgood Marshall, announced that it was moving（这词用得太好了） its annual convention in July to Las Vegas from Phoenix. The fraternity（兄弟会） said it had been expecting as many as 10,000 people, including members and their families, to come to the meeting.

The fraternity’s board decided that it could not host a meeting in a state with “a law that could put the civil rights and the very dignity of our members at risk （put…at risk）during their stay in Phoenix,” said Herman Mason, the general president.

In Phoenix on Saturday, a far smaller and more subdued crowd of about 1,000 people gathered by 3 p.m. on the lawn（草坪，草地） at the State Capitol.

Most had handmade signs, including one with Governor Brewer wearing a black witch hat and reading “Jan Brewer: Arizona’s wicked witch of the West.” （详细讲述一个游行是如何组织起来的，以Phoenix为例）

The rally was primarily peaceful with the mostly Latino crowd marching around the Capitol, but a few arguments broke out with people who supported the law.

One demonstrator, Martina Paz, 42, of Phoenix, held a photograph of her 23-year-old son, Adan Buelna, who she said was in the Army stationed in Texas and was waiting to be deployed（调入）
to the Middle East.

“My son will be protecting the rights and liberty of people on the other side of the world, but who is going to protect our rights here in Arizona,” Ms. Paz said.

She said that she feared that even though she and her husband have submitted applications to become legal residents, they will be stopped by the police and possibly be deported.（举了一个具体的例子：即使递交了申请，也不一定就能成为合法的移民，还要受警察等政府力量的干预）

Commentary：
The speaker just states a phenomenon on the rally against the immigration law happens recently in Arizona. The officers in power and the populace have different opinions on it. To protect the immigrates’ rights, discredit the racial problems, many people decide to call on a march to request the law’s overhaul. To some extent, someone overacts in this rally so that violates the regulation, which also brings about the downside meanwhile. In my opinion, when faced the unjust law, particular for someone, we just employ the peaceful ways to fight against, rather than the violence and violation from laws.

lxklysUID: 2738043

Debate  biodiesel
生词 好词好短语
好句 观点


Background reading
Biodiesel

Oil in your coffee
Feb 4th 2009
From Economist.com

A new source of fuel production

RUNNING a diesel（柴油机） engine on a plant-based fuel is hardly a new idea. Indeed, one of the early demonstrations shown by Rudolph Diesel, the German engineer who invented the engines at the end of the 1800s, operated on（介词的用法） pure peanut oil. Diesel fuel made from crude（天然的） oil eventually won the day because it was easier to use and cheaper to produce. Now new forms of biodiesel are starting to change the picture again. And one of the latest sources comes from the remains of a drink enjoyed the world over（以后表示全世界就可以这样了）: coffee.（本段开门见山，从植物燃料引入咖啡这一新兴生物燃料）

Biodiesels are becoming increasingly popular. In America, Minnesota has decreed（颁布）
that all diesel sold in the state has to contain 2% biodiesel (much of it from the crops grown by the state’s soya farmers). Biodiesel can also be found blended into（混合在一起） the fuel used by public and commercial vehicles and by trains in a number of countries. Aircraft-engine makers are also testing biofuel blends. Because biodiesels can be made from materials derived from plants, which use carbon dioxide to grow, they potentially have a much lower carbon footprint（足迹） than petroleum-based fuels.（本段描写生物燃料现在十分盛行,照应第一句话）

Coffee is also a plant product, but once the beans are ground and used they end up being thrown away or put on gardens as compost（混合肥料）. Narasimharao Kondamudi, Susanta Mohapatra and Manoranjan Misra of the University of Nevada at Reno have found that coffee grounds can yield（今天才知道，它除了“屈服”外，还有生产的意思） by weight 10-15% of biodiesel relatively easily. Moreover, when run in an engine the fuel does not have an offensive smell—just a whiff of（轻轻的一股味道） coffee. Some biodiesels made from used cooking-oil leave a car exhaust smelling like a fast-food joint（大块肉）. And after the diesel has been extracted, the coffee grounds can still be used for compost.（咖啡作为燃料的诸多好处，便于榨取且味道好闻）

The researchers’ work began two years ago when Dr Misra, a heavy coffee drinker, left a cup unfinished and the next day noticed that the coffee was covered by a film of（薄薄的一层，今天才知道可以这样用）
oil. Since he was investigating biofuels, Dr Misra enlisted his colleagues to look at coffee’s potential. The nearby Starbucks was happy to oblige（乐于效劳）
by supplying grounds.（讲咖啡的这种功能是如何被发现的）

They found that coffee biodiesel is comparable to the best biodiesels on the market. But unlike soya and other plant-based biodiesels, it does not use up plants or land that might otherwise be planted with food crops.（再一次说明咖啡的好处，不会占用过多的土地来种植）

Unmodified oils from plants, like the peanut oil used by Diesel, have a high viscosity（粘性） and require engine alterations. Diesel fuel is less thick and usually can be burned in an engine with little or no tinkering（随便的以外行方式做）. The diesel-extraction for coffee grounds is similar to that used for other vegetable oils. It employs a process called transesterification, which reacts the grounds with an alcohol in the presence of a catalyst.（这种油的萃取对技术要求比较高）

The researchers start off by drying their coffee grounds overnight（突然，很快，有一夜之间就…的意思） and then pour in some common chemical solvents（溶剂）, such as hexane, ether and dichloromethane, to dissolve the oils. The grounds are then filtered out and the solvents separated (to be reused with the next batch of coffee grounds). The remaining oil is treated with an alkali to remove free fatty acids (which form a soap). Then transesterification takes place by heating the crude biodiesel to about 100 degrees Celsius to remove any water, and treating it with methanol （一种化学制剂）and a catalyst. On cooling to room temperature and left to stand, the biodiesel floats up, leaving a layer of glycerine at the bottom. These layers are separated and the remaining biodiesel cleaned to remove any residues.（本段讲如何萃取）

Although some people try to brew（酿造） their own diesel at home from leftovers（剩下的东西）
and recycled cooking oils, coffee-based diesel seems better suited（适合的） to larger-scale processes. Dr Misra says that 1 litre of biodiesel requires 5-7 kg of coffee grounds, depending on the oil content（满足，满意） of the coffee used. In their laboratory his team has set up a one-gallon-a-day production facility, which uses between 19-26kg of coffee grounds. The biofuel should cost about $1 per gallon to make in a medium-sized installation, the researchers estimate.（这一段讲述咖啡这种新能源相比于植物油来说更加适用）

Commercial production might be suitable for an operation that collects coffee grounds from big coffee chains and cafeterias. There is plenty available: a report by the United States Department of Agriculture says that annual world coffee demand consumes more than 7m tonnes of coffee, which the researchers estimate could produce some 340m gallons of biodiesel. Time, perhaps, for another cup before refilling the car.（要使用这种咖啡的最好来源就是从巨大的咖啡链和咖啡馆中收集咖啡）

About this debate
The petrol-powered engine's life is drawing noisily towards its close. But what will replace it? One possibility is just to replace the petrol. Biofuels burn just as well and don't contribute to global warming. Or do they? Land needs to be cleared to grow them, and making them needs energy. Electric cars have better acceleration and really are zero emission. Or are they? Not if the electricity is made by burning coal.（超级经典！！！！）

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lxklysUID: 2738043

Opening statements（先贴一部分）
生词 好词好句
好句 观点

Though the price of oil has fallen from the dizzy heights of last summer, the stuff is still expensive by historical standards, and the palest of green shoots of recovery have been enough to cause an uptick. Oil is getting scarcer. It is concentrated in parts of the world not noted for their political stability. And burning it is a huge source of man-made carbon dioxide, with all its attendant（伴随的） risk of climate change. One way or another, then, the age of oil is drawing towards its close. The question is, what will replace it as the source of power for motive power.（由此引出下文）
Several contenders（竞争者） have been tried and found wanting（缺乏的，不足的）. In particular, hydrogen, either burned directly in internal combustion engines or used to make electricity in fuel cells, has been touted（极力吹捧） around for decades. The so-called hydrogen economy has, though, failed to materialise. The gas is explosive and hard to handle. It is also hard to store in a form dense enough to be a plausible on-board fuel. Its boiling point is only 20 degrees above absolute zero, so carrying it liquid in tanks（大容器） is tricky. And attempts to absorb it in large quantities into special reservoirs（水库，蓄水池） made of things such as carbon nanotubes have proved equally futile as a practical technology. Hydrogen cars, then, are going nowhere.（本段中心句就是第一句话，以H为例，证明使用这些能源的不现实性）
Instead, and surprisingly rapidly, two ideas from the dawn(开始，开端) of motoring(开汽车) have been revived. Before the dominance of petrol and its cousin diesel, there were serious attempts to make battery-powered electric cars and also cars powered by ethanol（乙醇，酒精）. These two approaches were driven off the road as more and more oil was found and an oil-based infrastructure（基础建设） achieved economies of scale. Now, however, with better technology, both are back. Cars powered by batteries and by biofuels, such as ethanol, are making headway（朝向目标的前进） in the marketplace. But the two use very different technological approaches and, in the long run, it is doubtful whether there is room for both. We are therefore delighted to have two of the leaders of the rival approaches to debate the merits of each cause.（介绍两种争论）
Proposing the motion is Alan Shaw, the boss of Codexis. His firm uses techniques that mimic sexual reproduction and natural selection to create artificial enzymes（酵素） that perform tasks no natural enzyme can manage. Among these is the synthesis of chemicals that can be used as motor fuels. These chemicals, such as octanol, a heavier relative of the ethanol used as biofuel today, make good substitutes for petrol, and can also be mixed with it. Codexis is already dealing with Royal Dutch Shell, one of the world's largest oil companies, to commercialise（使商业化） this approach.（介绍支持者的背景）
Opposing the motion we have Sidney Goodman. Mr Goodman is vice-president of automotive alliances at Better Place, an electric-car company that is building the infrastructure needed to support such vehicles in Israel, and plans to do the same in Denmark and Hawaii. His firm, too, relies on a fairly new technology: large-sized versions of the lithium-ion batteries（锂电池） now used to power laptop computers and mobile phones. Better Place's vehicles can be recharged in the normal way, by plugging them into the electricity grid, but their battery packs（电池板）
can also be replaced in a matter of（大约） minutes at special roadside filling stations.（介绍反对的背景）
Both approaches have their virtues and vices. The biggest virtue of biofuels from the consumer's point of view is continuity. Next-generation biofuels of the sort Dr Shaw is developing will burn in existing engines without those engines having to be modified. The production lines in Nagoya, Wolfsburg and (assuming it gets past its current difficulties) Detroit, will not have to be retooled（改组，重装）, nor will car-owners have to learn new habits.
The consumer virtue of electric cars, paradoxically, is the opposite. Because they are a new, disruptive（分裂性的）
technology, they provide an opportunity for a complete redesign. Most of those now on the drawing-board will look familiar, but already engineers are starting to play, as the three-wheeled Aptera, which will be available later this year, demonstrates. Also, electric cars have high acceleration and no need for a gear box. It is surely no coincidence that one of the first on the market, the Tesla, is a top-of-the-range sports car.（讲消费者对生物能源和电车的态度）
Environmentally, both technologies are green, but not necessarily as green as they might appear at first sight. Being made from plants (which draw their carbon from the air), biofuels make no net contribution of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. That is good. But plants have to be grown, and that takes land, some of which may previously have been virgin（原始的） forest, which is bad. Batteries produce no carbon dioxide at all, of course. But they have to be recharged using electricity which comes from power stations. If that means burning more coal rather than, say, building more wind turbines, then that is bad, too.（从环保角度说两者的优缺点）
Which of these technologies will dominate the future, then, is truly moot（悬而未决）.
At the moment, they look evenly balanced, but both are changing rapidly. Which makes the greater strides（一大步）
towards cheapness and efficiency will obviously have an effect on the outcome, as will external factors such as（其后可接句子）
how quickly electricity grids can be upgraded to cope with the extra demand that a widespread adoption of electric cars would require (biofuels need no such change in the infrastructure) and whether political will gathers behind one or the other.（到底未来什么占主导地位现在还很难说）
All these areas, and others I have no doubt missed, will be explored by Dr Shaw and Mr Goodman over the coming days. As both a neutral observer and an interested party, I, for one, am looking forward to it immensely.


The proposer's opening remarks
May 22nd 2009 | Alan Shaw Ph.D.

Cars of the future may be more like the cars of today than some think. It is the fuel that will be different. This fuel will come from sustainable sources. It will be produced closer to where it is used. It will be cleaner. In short, it will be advanced biofuel.
This is important to all of us concerned about the environment. Why? In reality, most cars of the future will be powered like the cars of today. Generations of automobiles, including today's models and most to come, rely on the internal combustion engine. Meanwhile（过渡词）, replacement of existing cars will not be instantaneous. According to AAA (American Automobile Association), there are over 240m vehicles in the United States. Passenger cars had a median age of about nine years in 2006, and this median age has been steadily rising since 2001. Cars and trucks 11 years and older now account for more than a third—36%—of vehicles on the road. As the recession continues to affect new car purchases, these ages are likely to rise.（从汽车不可能在短期之内替换来说明应该更注重环境）
As cars are replaced, future cars that consumers will buy must be affordable and convenient to operate. Gasoline (petrol) and diesel are the most affordable and convenient fuels of the last century, and they remain so today. However, in recent years the sustainability of petroleum-derived gasoline and diesel has been questioned. What will future fuels be like? Future fuels must be compatible with existing car engines and the current fuel delivery（传送）infrastructure. And all of us as global citizens will demand that fuel be cleaner and sustainable. The biofuels of the future will meet those tests. They will be made from biomass, engineered by modern biotechnology to be renewable and clean and practical for customers to find and use, right down to the corner filling station.（消费者对于新能源的要求）
Next generation biofuels offer compelling advantages. First, they perform much like gasoline and diesel today. In industry parlance（说法）, these are called "fungible"（取代物）, meaning they are interchangeable within the existing fuel supply. They will also be compatible with existing vehicles and fuel distribution systems, bypassing（绕过） the need for costly（昂贵的） new delivery infrastructure systems. Use of advanced biofuels will also eliminate concern about a "blend wall", since they can be blended in any concentration with petrochemical fuels, increasing their penetration.（新能源的两大优点）

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紧接上文
生词  好词好短语
好句 观点

In the future, car owners will not need to change how they buy or use fuel. A good analogy from our home here in Silicon Valley is Web 2.0 software, where changes to online applications are immediately available to every user. No need to buy new hardware, wait for upgrades or hope it works when installed.
Biofuels will be the most sustainable and environmentally compatible transportation fuels. First-generation transportation biofuels, such as corn-based ethanol, have been useful in reducing dependence on fossil fuels. However, they have not been efficient enough in energy output, and complex issues concerning food prices and land use have been raised. (用食物作生物燃料的弊端)In the future, commercially viable, fungible biofuels will be based on multiple non-food feedstocks（原料）, sourced locally near fuel production sites.
Today, significant public and private resources are being poured into（大量倾注使其更好） making our cars more efficient. We expect continued technology advances, towards our common goal of protecting the environment. Electric-battery vehicles, for example, are based on important new technology which we believe will have a role in the future. However, significant near-term challenges remain. （虽然大量的公共和私人资源都投入进去了，但是我们还是会面临巨大的挑战）
Performance issues such as suboptimal battery life and storage capacity are well known. But the potential impact on the environment is, ironically, one of the main issues concerning electric vehicles. First, electric-battery vehicles would be charged—predominantly—on coal-produced power, which is well documented as a significant source of greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming. Clearly, generating more coal-based power to charge electric cars would also generate additional pollution.（第一个问题是：电池车辆的充电会导致更多煤的使用，反而带来更多污染）
Second, battery-powered cars will likely depend on lithium（锂）, a raw（未加工的） material already in high demand from the computer industry. This raises concerns about potential environmental harm in the less-developed countries where lithium is found. In addition, the environmental impact of expended battery disposal will need to be addressed. These obstacles may create challenges to the widespread availability and adoption of practical, affordable electric vehicles.（锂电池的使用对电脑技术要求很高，这对发展中国家来说也很不利）
Another barrier to plug-in rechargeable, battery-driven cars is the reliance on our weak, antiquated（过时的）
power transmission（传输） infrastructure. In the United States alone, a report from the Electric Power Research Institute estimates that the country currently has enough extra electric capacity to charge 1m cars overnight. But there are more than 240 m vehicles now in use. An estimated 30m or more electric cars added to the transportation fleet in the next decade could severely tax（造成…的负担） an already strained（紧张的） system. （即使更多的那样的汽车出现了，国家的供电装备并没有与时具进，也导致汽车的不可用）
The current US power grid is woefully（糟糕的） inadequate and in need of significant upgrades. Experts say the US system is not capable of reliably and safely meeting the energy challenges facing us now and in coming decades. Further, the areas of greatest wind and solar potential may not be close enough to the grid system, triggering（发电的） siting and other debates that could fracture otherwise sound alliances. Consider, for example, environmentalists who are split between upholding（支持） the Endangered Species Act when debating the fate of the desert tortoise（玳瑁壳） over siting solar panels and transmission infrastructure in the Mojave Desert on the grid（输电网）, for broader distribution.（美国的输电网需要改革了）
We expect vigorous debate to continue among scientists and others about the future of transportation fuel. This is healthy and ensures that all viewpoints are heard. In the end, we all agree transportation pollution must be reduced. For this goal to be met, the fuel of the future must be accessible and affordable for consumers, as well as cleaner. Otherwise, it will make no difference, because it will remain a laboratory curiosity or niche marketing opportunity. Next-generation biofuels, derived from renewable natural sources, are a practical step in the right direction.


The opposition's opening remarks
May 22nd 2009 | Sidney Goodman
When Great Britain entered the first world war, its First Lord of the Admiralty was concerned about his fleet. All the ships were powered in the same way—by burning coal—and the young Winston Churchill observed that the interests of security required a diversification（多样化） of the fuel mix so that no nation was dependent on a single means of fuel or energy. And so he introduced into the fleet refined petroleum, which set off a series of events that, ironically enough, led nearly the entire transportation world to come to depend on that same fuel. Today, roughly 98% of the world's surface transportation is powered by refined crude oil（原油）. Ask people about what that mix will look like a generation from now, and you are bound to hear the same solution that motivated Churchill-diversity, so that again, no nation or economy is completely reliant on a single means of fuel.（指出能源的多样化的必要性）
Diversity in fuel sources is not an undesirable objective. However, it is often confused with something else: delivery.（多样性的能源难就难在它的传输性上） Future transportation can diversify its mix of molecules—can substitute refined crude for harvested produce like corn or sugarcane—or other feed stocks still being developed in the lab. But as we look beyond the world of transportation we rarely see molecules used as a driver. And there is a very good reason for that. Electrons are more efficient.（其他多样性的能源的传输性问题很难解决，而且比起电，它没那么有效率）
Consider why we have made such a massive investment to build mankind's single largest machine, the electricity grid. Because engineers recognised that allowing electrons to be produced and distributed by this means was far more efficient than hauling wood, coal or any liquid substance to the point at which power was required.
Today we live in a connected world; almost everyone has a connected device—cell phones or PDAs. They come in every imaginable shape and size, every colour and set of features. But every last one of them runs not on molecules but electrons; every one of them has a rechargeable battery that is, in most instances（在大多数情形下）, also switchable（可转接）.（在这个万物都有联系关系的世界，所有东西都用电池进行充电）
The car is one of the last non-connected devices, but that can be easily changed. Unlike other alternative fuel solutions, the science and technology exist today to make mass-market electric cars a reality.（电子car成为可能）
A study for the Department of Energy finds that "off-peak"（非高峰期的）
electricity production and transmission capacity could fuel 70% of the US light-duty vehicle (LDV) fleet, if they were plug-in hybrid（合成的）
electrics.1  Not only does the capacity exist today on the existing grid, but electric cars can also accelerate the market for renewable（可再生的） energy. Renewable energy has been difficult to capture because it is intermittent（断断续续的）, but electric cars can be plugged to capture renewable sources of energy at peak times when traditional demand is typically low and that renewable energy is wasted.（电车对可再生资源有合理利用的作用）
What is needed is not a new technology or molecule that we must learn how to produce, distribute and deliver to our vehicles, but a new conduit（导线管） to the car—a conduit for electrons rather than molecules.
So why haven't electrons come to transportation so far?
There have been many challenges to the adoption of the electric car, but the heart of the challenge has been in the cost and range of the battery. Past generations of batteries were dirty, unreliable, short in range and high in price. Today's batteries continue to be heavy, expensive and range-limited, at least when compared with a similar volume-metric on oil. However, the surprising fact is that today's batteries, when combined with proper infrastructure and business model, can actually deliver a cleaner, more convenient and cost-effective experience than anything else available to drivers today.（以前最大的挑战就是电池的费用和涉及范围的问题，现在新的电池解除了上述问题）
To illustrate this, imagine for a moment a plug in every parking spot. The majority of drivers will return to their car to find it has been topped off to the full range of the battery, comfortably 100 miles in a conventional sedan（传统型轿车）. Since the vast majority of trips（行程） are within that 100-mile range, a ubiquitous（普遍存在的） charge infrastructure would serve to take the inconvenience of pulling into a service station for a five-minute fill-up out of the driving experience. Add to that a network of battery-switch stations that replace depleted batteries with fully charged ones in less time than it takes to fill up with petrol and the consumer experience is even more compelling. Such a station was successfully demonstrated by Better Place in Yokohama, Japan on May 13th.（这种电池转换站的设立使得人们更为方便生省时，因此更具有吸引力）
With a network of ubiquitous charge-ready parking spots and battery-switch stations, the consumer experience becomes more convenient, with zero stops for energy in the daily routine, and very quick stops at 100-mile intervals on extended trips.（具体讲方便在哪里）
With electricity to power electric cars, we have the opportunity to break our dependence on oil in a meaningful way today and to do it on a global scale. Every element of electrification described is based on customer-ready technology that has minimal barriers to scale.（这一切实现的前提是电池得缩小到一定规模）
Meanwhile, alternative liquid fuels lack any available feedstock（原料）
capable of scaling to replace oil today, because of either competition with food crops or the limitations of available land, so that currently proven biofuels have a very low ceiling（上限） of capacity. And even if science yielded a form of lab-produced cellulosic ethanol（纤维质乙醇） that could reasonably be produced in volumes to meaningfully offset（补偿，抵消） oil use, there would still be a massive distribution infrastructure required that does not exist today. Finally, because the distribution of electrons is so much more efficient than that of molecules, virtually any example cited of success from alternative liquids could be seen as a greater success if those same liquids produced electricity that was then fed to the vehicle by means of the grid.（因为土地以及食物的限制，导致生物燃料的使用受到限制，而且它的分配过程也很麻烦，因此比较机会成本来说，肯定是电车划算）
In a recent study from the University of California Merced, scientists found that biomass converted into electricity produced 81% more transportation miles and 108% more emissions offsets compared with ethanol.
And so, while the future of our transportation energy should be about diversity—particularly about a growing diversity of clean energy sources—this should not confuse the conduit by which this energy is delivered to the vehicle. That conduit should emphatically be for electrons that can be delivered to the car either through direct charge or battery switch. That is the formula（处方） to give the world the clean and secure energy future that it has so long sought, and it can be executed today. （电车能够解决如何传输的问题，并且也很清洁和安全而且具有可行性）

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Rebuttal statements

生词 好词好短语
观点 好句

The essence of the debate has been neatly summarised by Jonathan S. Fox, one of the commentators（评论者） from the floor. On May 22nd, he wrote:
"Dr Shaw appears to be arguing from the perspective that biofuels are easier to get to, and therefore more practical, while Mr Goodman argues that electric cars are better, and that will win out. This makes for a compelling and asymmetrical debate that has us making a judgment call."
In their rebuttals, Alan Shaw and Sidney Goodman reiterate these points. Dr Shaw suggests that a lot of innovation is still required to make batteries good enough and cheap enough for the mainstream. Mr Goodman seems confident that these innovations will happen. Conversely（相反的）, Mr Goodman points out that electric motors are far more efficient than internal-combustion engines and therefore cheaper to run, even if more expensive to buy in the first place. Dr Shaw thinks innovations in the fuels themselves will improve the performance of internal combustion. These innovations are made possible because biotechnology can produce bespoke（专门定做的） chemicals efficiently and in large quantities in a way that traditional chemistry cannot.
Much may turn on the ability of the electricity grids in each car market to cope with the demands that electric cars will put on them（惊人的长句!!!）. Mr Goodman sees a nirvana(心灵的解脱) in which electric cars are an active part of the grid, smoothing out（解决） spikes in demand by sucking in electric power（充电） at night, when it is cheap and wind turbines would otherwise be turning to no effect. Rapid recharging on the road, though, requires higher voltages（电压） and three-phase power, both of which will need new infrastructure. Rapid recharging also requires battery materials that, for the moment, exist only in laboratories. Proponents of battery cars argue that private vehicles will rarely need to recharge this way as they are used mainly for short journeys. That is true, but commercial vehicles often make long journeys, and they are a sizeable part of the fleet.（电车会对电压以及电池材料的要求过于苛刻）
Another important question, in both cases, is where the raw materials will come from. One criticism of biofuels is that growing the plant matter used to make them will compete with food production. To the extent this is thought to have happened so far, it has been in the limited context of ethanol made from maize. That is not a very good example for two reasons. First, the American maize market is rigged（营私舞弊） by government subsidies, so there is no proper market price for American maize. An honest American biofuel policy would eliminate these subsidies and also eliminate barriers to the import of genuinely commercial biofuels, such as ethanol made from Brazilian sugar cane.（关于没有生物燃料会导致事物短缺这一说法的回应：第一是价格是由于政府的干预而导致的；第二个是可以通过进口解决这一问题）
The second reason is that maize is, indeed, a food crop. It is used to make ethanol because it is rich in starch（含淀粉）
(the result of selective breeding to make it nutritious), and existing yeast-based（依靠酵母） fermentation（发酵） has to start with starch or sugar. The sort of biofuels Dr Shaw is promoting will be made from a much wider range of raw materials, since his enzymes will be able to digest cellulose, the main component of plant matter. Initially, the parts of food crops that are not eaten (stalks and leaves, in the case of maize) will be converted into fuel. Dedicated（专门用作）
fuel crops are certainly in the works, but the point of these is to turn the whole plant into fuel, so less land will be needed to make a given amount of fuel than if food crops were the raw material.(被使用为燃料的部分通常是庄稼不被食用的部分，而且如果把整个事物都转化成燃料的话，也不能证明它会额外增加土地)
As far as batteries are concerned, the raw-material question is where does the lithium come from. All plausible current and future battery designs use lithium ions as the positive-charge carriers. (The negative charge is carried by the electrons that run through the electric motor.) Lithium ions are small, and therefore mobile. Only hydrogen and helium ions are smaller, but the former are the basis of traditional lead-acid batteries, which have other problems. Helium（氦）
is chemically inert（惰性的） and so useless as a battery material, as well as being expensive.（锂的来源成问题，而且其他元素也不一定能作为电池的材料）
Known supplies of lithium, though, are geographically restricted, with the biggest reserves being in Bolivia. Whether swapping（能代替的） oil states for lithium states as strategic suppliers is what those who decry（责难） the West's dependence on Persian Gulf（波斯湾）monarchies of questionable political stability had in mind is moot, to say the least.（惊艳的长句！！！看不懂）（锂的来源国家不一定会对美国输出锂）
The upshot（最终结果） is that the debate is still very much live. At the moment, voters seem to favour batteries. But our forthcoming guest speaker, Rob Carlson, is a biotechnologist. He may help
swing（突然转向相反方向）things the other way.


The proposer's rebuttal remarks
May 26th 2009 | Alan Shaw Ph.D.

Electric cars, while an interesting future transportation option, are not commercially viable on a sufficiently large scale to seriously address air pollution, when compared with advanced biofuels.
These electric vehicles, and all that is required to bring them to market and power them, have serious development problems. None of them is trivial（琐碎的）. They include raw materials sourcing, battery and vehicle cost, performance and consumer safety. They will further burden the electric grid and the environment; nearly half of the electricity generated in the United States comes from coal-fired power plants, according to the Energy Information Administration（立马举出证据来说明）. Overall（总共的，包括一切在内的）, electric vehicles carry a significant environmental and economic price tag（代价，标签）.（从电车对环境的损害、以及电网、原材料的高要求来说明代价巨大）
In fact, the electric car industry has already acknowledged these issues in public meetings. As Chemical & Engineering News reported on May 4th* at an April meeting in Washington, DC, car makers, suppliers and government officials focused on a "cost and quality gap（成本和质量上的差距） (which) keeps pushing plug-in hybrid vehicles into the future". In order "to reach commercial viability, the U.S. needs to do more than scale up（按比例增加）
manufacturing. Producers will need significant chemical and materials innovations to bring costs down and make batteries that can compete on quality, consistency and safety." Lithium, the vital element of the car battery, can be explosive. Supplies are in potentially inaccessible（潜在的不能轻易到达的）
regions, all a considerable distance from manufacturing centres.（电子车工业的代表也陈述了发展这项工业的难处，就是成本和质量上的差距）
Truly viable batteries are likely years away, as is the infrastructure（公共建设）required to make recharging convenient and practical. Those who expect quick resolution of these serious technical challenges, as well as the well-documented capacity issues of the current electric grid, will be disappointed, as will their investors.（这种能随时充电的方案要想实现还得花费一定的时间）
By contrast, advanced biofuels technology will be substantially different from first-generation corn-based ethanol. Early computers and cell phones were quite different from today's models（类比的手法）; future fuels will also be markedly（明显清楚的，学着） improved. （1）They will not rely onfood crops but on agricultural waste and other natural biomass crops.（2）They will not mix with water as ethanol does, thus eliminating the flow and pipeline（管道，渠道） corrosion possible today. Because these new molecules can be tailored to（适应某事物） the task, they will perform much like petroleum in the car, but without significant emissions. Feedstocks（送入加工厂的原料） will be sourced locally and can be grown where food is not. These developments can contribute to creation of new businesses in these communities, creating jobs and economic growth（这个观点新！！！）. （生物燃料的可持续发展好处：一是不会占用事物而是能很好的废物利用；二是它不会混水，从而降低了液体和管道的腐蚀；三是它的加工还能促进新新产业的发展）
Another critical difference between biofuels and the electric car lies in the route to commercial viability（商业可行性）.（1）Advanced biofuels will be "drop-in" fuels that will be incorporated seamlessly into（天衣无缝的融合进去） current vehicles and the fuel delivery infrastructure. （2）They will not increase overall driver cost or require improvements to the supply chain.
（3）Further, they will not compromise（危害） vehicle performance or safety.（从3点来说明其商业可行性：第一是它能更好的和当前的交通工具和燃料传输渠道融合；第二是它更经济；第三十它比较安全）

We expect transportation in the future to include a variety of consumer choices. However, those that make it to the market at critical mass will be based on sound（合理的） business models which recognise both economic reality and common sense. With close to 250m cars on the road just in the United States, any viable business plan will not rely on rapid, large-scale replacement of those vehicles. Successful technology companies will collaborate with partners with the expertise and resources to support products commercialisable on a global scale. At Codexis, we are partnered with Shell, one of the world's leading energy companies. Shell has many decades of experience finding and developing new energy sources, as well as a comprehensive knowledge of the challenges inherent（固有的，天生的）
in creating new energy products and businesses. We share Shell's commitment（支持）
to discovering and developing sustainable future fuels that provide practical, affordable consumer choices while safeguarding our environment.（要想使得未来的交通满足消费者的需要，需要合理的商业运作，这就需要公司之间的合作，本文举例了一个与更专业的公司之间的合作去开发新能源）