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agnes2010UID: 2794922

【16-2】

studied by Agnes

Oxford Tradition Comes to This: ‘Death’ (Expound)

By SARAH LYALL

Published: May 27, 2010

OXFORD, England — The exam was simple yet devilish【简单而又残忍的】, consisting of a single noun (“water,” for instance, or “bias”) that applicants had three hours somehow to spin into a coherent【capable of thinking and expressing yourself in a clear and consistent manner】 essay. An admissions requirement for All Souls College here, it was meant to test intellectual agility, but sometimes seemed to test only the ability to sound brilliant while saying not much of anything【听上去好听说起来就不是那么回事了】.

“An exercise in showmanship to avoid answering the question,” is the way the historian Robin Briggs describes his essay on “innocence” in 1964, a tour de force【绝技】 effort that began with the opening chords of Wagner’s “Das Rheingold” and then brought in, among other things, the flawed heroes of Stendhal and the horrors of the prisoner-of-war camp in the William Golding novel “Free Fall.”

No longer will other allusion-deploying Oxford youths have the chance to demonstrate the acrobatic flexibility【杂技般的灵活性】 of their intellect in quite the same way. All Souls, part of Oxford University, recently decided, with some regret, to scrap the one-word exam.

It has been offered annually since 1932 (and sporadically【偶发地，零星地】 before that) as part of a grueling, multiday affair that, in one form or another, has been administered since 1878 and has been called the hardest exam in the world. The unveiling of the word was once an event of such excitement that even non-applicants reportedly gathered outside the college each year, waiting for news to waft out. Applicants themselves discovered the word by flipping over a single sheet of paper and seeing it printed there, all alone, like a tiny incendiary device.

But that was then. “For a number of years, the one-word essay question had not proved to be a very valuable way of providing insight into the merits of the candidates,” said Sir John Vickers, the warden, or head, of the college.

In a university full of quirky individual colleges with their own singular【the single one of its kind】 traditions, All Souls still stands out for the intellectual riches it offers and the awe it inspires. Founded in 1438 and not open to undergraduates, it currently has 76 fellows drawn from the upper echelons【高层】 of academia and public life, most admitted on the strength of their achievements and scholarly credentials.

Previous fellows include Sir Isaiah Berlin, Sir Christopher Wren, William Gladstone and T. E. Lawrence (of Arabia). Hilaire Belloc and John Buchan are said to have failed to get in. In recent years, fellows have included a Nobel Prize winner, several cabinet members, a retired senior law lord and a lord chancellor.

In addition, two young scholars are chosen each year from among Oxford students who graduated recently with the highest possible academic results. Called examination fellows, they get perks including room and board, 14,783 pounds (about $21,000) a year for a seven-year term and the chance to engage in erudite discussions over languorous meals with the other fellows.

But first they have to take the exam. It consists of 12 hours of essays over two days. Half are on the applicants’ academic specialties, the other half on general subjects, with questions like: “Do the innocent have nothing to fear?” “Isn’t global warming preferable to global cooling?” “How many people should there be?” and the surprisingly relevant, because this is Britain: “Does the moral character of an orgy change when the participants wear Nazi uniforms?”

Those are daunting【discouraging through fear】 enough. But it is the one-word-question essay (known simply as “Essay”) that candidates still remember decades later. Past words, chosen by the fellows, included “style,” “censorship,” “charity,” “reproduction,” “novelty,” “chaos” and “mercy.”

It was not a test for everyone.

“Many candidates, including some of the best, seemed at a loss when confronted with this exercise,” said Mr. Briggs, a longtime teacher of modern history at Oxford.

Others found it exhilarating【making lively and cheerful】. “Brilliant fun,” a past applicant named Matthew Edward Harris wrote in The Daily Telegraph recently, recalling his 2007 essay, on “harmony.”

He had resolved, he said, that “No matter what word I was given, I would structure my answer using Hegel’s dialectic.” And then, like a chef rummaging through the recesses of his refrigerator for unlikely soup ingredients, he added a discussion of Kant’s categorical imperative and an analysis of the creative tensions among the vocalists in Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young (he didn’t get in).

The writer Harry Mount, an Oxford graduate and the author of “Carpe Diem: Put a Little Latin in Your Life,” didn’t get in, either. His essay, in 1994, was on “miracles.”

What was in it?

“Crying Madonnas in Ireland, that sort of thing,” Mr. Mount said. “And the battle between faith and cynicism. I was a cynic and didn’t believe in miracles, and perhaps that was bad. I had just read about Karl Popper and his theory of falsification, so I threw in a bit about that.”

Justin Walters, the founder and chief executive of Investis, an online corporate communication service company, said that writing his essay, on “corruption,” was not half as bad as the oral exam several weeks later, conducted by a long row of fellows peering across a table.

“ ‘Mr. Walters, you made some very interesting distinctions in your essay. Are you prepared to defend it?’ ” he remembered one of the fellows asking. Unfortunately, he had only a vague recollection of what he had written. “You’re the teacher — you figure it out,” he recalled thinking. (He must have done something right: he got in.)

Sir John, the current college warden, has worked as the Bank of England’s chief economist and been president of the Royal Economic Society, among other jobs. He draws a self-protective veil over the memory of his own essay, in 1979, on “conversion.”

“I do shudder【不寒而栗】 at the thought of what I must have written,” he said.

polosongruiUID: 2595436

Oxford Tradition Comes to This: ‘Death’ (Expound详述)

By SARAH LYALL

Published: May 27, 2010

OXFORD, England — The exam was simple yet devilish魔鬼般的，凶恶的, consisting of a single noun (“water,” for instance, or “bias”) that applicants had three hours somehow to spin into a coherent条理清楚的，连贯的；协调的 essay. An admissions requirement for All Souls College here, it was meant to test intellectual agility敏捷，灵活，轻快, but sometimes seemed to test only the ability to sound brilliant while saying not much of anything.

“An exercise in showmanship演出的技艺 to avoid answering the question,” is the way the historian Robin Briggs describes his essay on “innocence” in 1964, a tour de (a
preposition meaning "of" or "from") force effort that began with the opening chords和弦
of Wagner’s “Das Rheingold” and then brought in, among other things, the flawed heroes of Stendhal and the horrors of the prisoner-of-war camp in the William Golding novel “Free Fall.”

No longer will other allusion-deploying Oxford youths have the chance to demonstrate the acrobatic flexibility of their intellect in quite the same way. All Souls, part of Oxford University, recently decided, with some regret, to scrap废弃
the one-word exam.

It has been offered annually since 1932 (and sporadically before that) as part of a grueling精疲力尽的, multiday affair that, in one form or another, has been administered since 1878 and has been called the hardest exam in the world. The unveiling揭露 of the word was once an event of such excitement that even non-applicants reportedly gathered outside the college each year, waiting for news to waft out. Applicants themselves discovered the word by flipping over a single sheet of paper and seeing it printed there, all alone, like a tiny incendiary放火的，纵火的 device.

But that was then. “For a number of years, the one-word essay question had not proved to be a very valuable way of providing insight into the merits of the candidates,” said Sir John Vickers, the warden, or head, of the college.

In a university full of quirky古怪的 individual colleges with their own singular单数的；非凡的，突出的，奇特的 traditions, All Souls still stands out for the intellectual riches it offers and the awe敬畏 it inspires. Founded in 1438 and not open to undergraduates, it currently has 76 fellows drawn from the upper echelons等级，阶层 of academia and public life, most admitted on the strength of their achievements and scholarly credentials学术成就.

Previous fellows include Sir Isaiah Berlin, Sir Christopher Wren, William Gladstone and T. E. Lawrence (of Arabia). Hilaire Belloc and John Buchan are said to have failed to get in. In recent years, fellows have included a Nobel Prize winner, several cabinet内阁 members, a retired senior law lord领主，君主；贵族
and a lord chancellor.(英)名誉校长，(美)大学校长；(德)总理.

In addition, two young scholars are chosen each year from among Oxford students who graduated recently with the highest possible academic results. Called examination fellows, they get perks额外津贴；赏钱；小费 including room and board, 14,783 pounds (about $21,000) a year for a seven-year term and the chance to engage in erudite博学的 discussions over languorous meals with the other fellows.

But first they have to take the exam. It consists of 12 hours of essays over two days. Half are on the applicants’ academic specialties, the other half on general subjects, with questions like: “Do the innocent have nothing to fear?” “Isn’t global warming preferable to global cooling?” “How many people should there be?” and the surprisingly relevant, because this is Britain: “Does the moral character of an orgy放荡 change when the participants wear Nazi uniforms?”

Those are daunting使胆怯，使气馁 enough. But it is the one-word-question essay (known simply as “Essay”) that candidates still remember decades later. Past words, chosen by the fellows, included “style,” “censorship检查(制度),” “charity,” “reproduction生殖，复制,” “novelty新奇事物；新奇(感)；新颖廉价的物品,” “chaos” and “mercy.”

It was not a test for everyone.

“Many candidates, including some of the best, seemed at a loss when confronted with this exercise,” said Mr. Briggs, a longtime teacher of modern history at Oxford.

Others found it exhilarating使人兴奋的. “Brilliant fun,” a past applicant named Matthew Edward Harris wrote in The Daily Telegraph recently, recalling his 2007 essay, on “harmony.”

He had resolved, he said, that “No matter what word I was given, I would structure my answer using Hegel’s dialectic论证.” And then, like a chef厨师长，厨师
rummaging翻找，搜寻 through the recesses深处
of his refrigerator for unlikely soup ingredients, he added a discussion of Kant’s categorical绝对的 imperative命令；祈使句 and an analysis of the creative tensions among the vocalists流行歌手，声乐家
in Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young (he didn’t get in).

The writer Harry Mount, an Oxford graduate and the author of “Carpe Diem: Put a Little Latin in Your Life,” didn’t get in, either. His essay, in 1994, was on “miracles.”

What was in it?

“Crying Madonnas圣母玛利亚；圣母像 in Ireland, that sort of thing,” Mr. Mount said. “And the battle between faith and cynicism愤世嫉俗，犬儒主义. I was a cynic and didn’t believe in miracles, and perhaps that was bad. I had just read about Karl Popper and his theory of falsification反证, so I threw in a bit about that.”

Justin Walters, the founder and chief executive of Investis, an online corporate communication service company, said that writing his essay, on “corruption,” was not half一点也不，很，非常 as bad as the oral exam several weeks later, conducted by a long row of fellows peering across a table.

“ ‘Mr. Walters, you made some very interesting distinctions in your essay. Are you prepared to defend it?’ ” he remembered one of the fellows asking. Unfortunately, he had only a vague recollection记忆 of what he had written. “You’re the teacher — you figure it out,” he recalled thinking. (He must have done something right: he got in.)

Sir John, the current college warden监察员；监狱长；看守人，监护人, has worked as the Bank of England’s chief economist and been president of the Royal Economic Society, among other jobs. He draws a self-protective veil
n.面纱(罩)；遮盖物 vt.遮盖，掩饰 over the memory of his own essay, in 1979, on “conversion转变，变换；改变信仰.” “I do shudder颤动，打颤，颤栗 at the thought of what I must have written,” he said.

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polosongruiUID: 2595436

Education: Through the Wall of Ignorance

Monday, Apr. 21, 1947

—The Bill of Rights (1791)

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

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

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

Last week, after more than two years' study, the committee published its conclusions, The Relation oj Religion to Public Education (American Council on Education; $1). Main thesis, as summed up by George Zook: "Schools should accept religion and the churches as a factor of social life, just as much as they do the waterworks." The committee proposed to teach about religion, but not to teach religion itself, in the schools. For a while the group had considered a proposal to find and teach a set of principles common to all faiths (e.g., some form of Golden Rule), but rejected this as "watered-down打折扣的" religion acceptable to nobody.

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

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

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

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

"The study of the religious classics . . . in the regular literature program [should be expanded]. . . . The Bible圣经
is second to none最好的独一无二的 among the books that have influenced the thought and ideals of the Western world. [It deserves study] conducted with at least as much respect as is given to the great secular世俗的 classics, and devoid of arbitrary随意的，任意的；武断的,专制的
interpretations to the same extent. . . ."

"To confine the teaching of religion to separate 'religious courses' tends toward . . . splitting off使分离,分裂 of religion from the rest of life. . . . [Religious education] is not something to be added on to the school curriculum, but rather something to be integrated使)成为一体 with it"—in existing classes on history, sociology, psychology心理学, economics, philosophy, literature, music, the fine arts（艺术）.

Concluded the committee: "On all sides we see the disintegration瓦解 of loyalties . . . the revival苏醒；复活；复兴 of ancient prejudices, the increase of frustrations, the eclipse黯然失色 of hope. . . . Religion at its best处在最好状态 has always been an integrating force, a spiritual tonic增进健康之物，补品 for a soul racked折磨；使紧张，使努力 by fear and cringing畏缩，谄媚，奉承 in weakness. ... Its imperfections will not be lessened by an attitude of splendid isolation on the part of intellectuals知识分子, or of indifference on the part of those responsible for the education of youth."

polosongruiUID: 2595436

Editorial

Jobs and the Class of 2010

Published: May 21, 2010

Commencement毕业典礼 is supposed to be filled with hope, but for the class of 2010, these are grim残酷的 times. Over the past year, the unemployment rate for college graduates under age 25 has averaged 9.1 percent. For the roughly half of high school graduates under 25 and not in college, the average is 22.8 percent.

Worse, a deep labor
recession不景气, like this one, may be more than a temporary hardship. It could signal a long-term decline in living standards — downward mobility向下流动.

Where you start out in your career has a big impact on where you end up. When jobs are scarce, more college grads start out in lower-level jobs with lower starting salaries. Academic research suggests that for many of these graduates, that correlates相互关联 to overall全体的 lower levels of career attainment达成 and lower lifetime earnings.

Tough times for college grads mean even tougher times for high school graduates, because fewer jobs mean more competition from college-educated workers. In the past year, 59.5 percent of young high school grads on average had a job, compared with 70.2 percent in 2007.

The pat合适的 answer is that college students should consider graduate school as a way to delay a job search until things turn around, and that more high school students should go to college to improve their prospects前景.

For many undergraduates, especially those with large student debts, graduate school would be prohibitively过分的 expensive. And while more than half of this year’s high school grads are expected to be enrolled in college in the fall, most will have to work to help pay the bills. For them, college is not a retreat from a bad job market; a bad market is an obstacle to a college degree.

Washington has not been helping enough. The 2009 stimulus package刺激计划 — thanks to President Obama, Congressional国会的 Democrats民主党员 and a few Republican senators共和党参议员 — has supported some 2.5 million jobs, helping to avert避免 a much deeper recession. The economy is still missing more than 10 million jobs, and unless more is done to spur鼓励 employment, the impact on many new graduates and other workers will be harsh.严酷的

In his budget this year, Mr. Obama called for $266 billion in spending for jobs and stimulus. So far, Congress has passed only a $15 billion tax credit for hiring in 2010 and a few short-term extensions延长 of unemployment benefits. On Thursday, Democratic Congressional leaders called for $80 billion to extend federal benefits and subsidies津贴 for the unemployed through 2010 and to provide more aid to states. More emergency spending is crucial决定性的 to support consumer demand and, by extension相关地, hiring. The Democratic proposal also calls for relatively modest sums for summer youth jobs, small-business lending and state infrastructure基础设施 bonds.

The measures should be passed quickly. But recent debates suggests that the Republicans — in their role as nouveau新近产生的 deficit赤字 hawks — are likely to oppose more job-related spending unless it is paid for. The deficit needs to be addressed when the economy recovers. Right now, tax increases or spending cuts would only reduce economic activity, weakening the boost帮助 the measures are supposed to provide.

The White House and Democratic lawmakers need to make that case forcefully. Lawmakers owe it to their constituents 成分— and explaining the need for more job spending should not be that hard. Far too many Americans know how bad the situation is out there.

In the longer term, Congress will also need to do more to foster jobs and industries of the future, like green technology. Several taxes could be enacted制定 to help finance longer-term efforts, including the bank tax proposed by President Obama. Congress and the administration should also consider a financial transactions tax, both to curb控制
speculation投机 and to raise revenue税收 to rebuild the economy that was damaged, in large part, by the banks’ recklessness.

Without a bigger vision, more money and political courage, the future for those just entering the job market and already there looks bleak for years to come.

polosongruiUID: 2595436

Facebook, Google and privacy（隐私）

Dicing(切割) with data

Google and especially Facebook should change the way they look after people’s personal information

May 20th 2010 | From The Economist print edition

IN THE space of a week two of the best-known internet companies have found themselves in a pickle（陷入困境） over privacy. Facebook faces criticism（批评） for making more information about its users available by default（默认丨缺省）. Meanwhile Google has been castigated（严惩；纠正；修订） by a bevy of privacy regulators for inadvertently collecting data from unsecured（不保险的） Wi-Fi networks in people’s homes as part of a project to capture images（捕捉图像） of streets around the world.

Although the two cases案例 are distinct, they have revived fears that online privacy is being trampled践踏 underfoot as internet behemoths race to grab as much data as possible. And they have provoked激起calls for tougher action by regulators and governments to prevent web firms from abusing the mountains of personal data they now hold. Danah Boyd, a social-networking expert, has even argued that Facebook, with its hordes of一大群 members around the world, is now so embedded嵌入 in people’s lives that it should be regulated as a utility.

The firms have fought back回击. Facebook claims that most of its users are comfortable with the changes it has introduced, including one that lets it share detailed customer data with some external sites. It has blamed the furore引起公众愤怒 on media hysteria; only a few privacy activists have publicly committed “Facebook suicide” by closing their accounts (see article). As for Google, it has apologised for its “mistake” and says that leaders of its Street View project knew nothing about the software that allowed its roving vehicles to capture捕捉到 snippets of e-mails.

Friends or foes?

At its most extreme, the attack on Facebook and Google makes little sense. Treating them as utilities实用工具,公共事业 seems excessive过度的, for two reasons. They are not essential必要的 services that enjoy a local or national monopoly国家垄断; people who feel their privacy is being violated被侵犯 are free to hop to other web services (remember AltaVista and MySpace?), though many sites deliberately谨慎的 make it hard for them to take their data with them. A second reason to tread carefully is that strict regulation could stifle the rapid innovation in business models that has thrived on the internet. Instead, officials should concentrate on enforcing existing privacy rules—something they seem reassuringly keen to do. Canada’s privacy commissioner行政官, Jennifer Stoddart, has given warning that her organisation may take action against Facebook for violating a deal reached last year requiring the network to seek users’ permission before sharing their data.

However, even if, like this newspaper, you both distrust government intervention介入 and believe the world has gained from the sharing of information on the web, there are plainly real grounds for concern. For instance, Google claims it discovered that its software had been accidentally recording private information for several years only after privacy officials in Germany demanded that it come clean about the data being collected. That is a stunning admission from a technology giant—and privacy watchdogs are right to investigate that.

Facebook’s problem is more fundamental基础. True, the social network has some of the most extensive privacy controls on the web, but these have now become so complex—and are tweaked so often—that even privacy experts find them bamboozling欺骗. The company also has a powerful incentive动机
to push people into revealing more information. Facebook generates most of its revenue from targeted advertisements based on users’ demography人口统计 and interests, so the more data users share publicly the more money it can mint from ads. It may well be betting that users are now so hooked上钩 that they are unlikely to revolt against a gradual loosening of privacy safeguards隐私保护措施.

The worst thing is Facebook’s underlying prejudice against privacy. Sign up签约注册
and it assumes you want to share as much data as possible; if not, you have to change the settings, which can be a fiddly business. The presumption推测
should be exactly the opposite: the default should be tight privacy controls, which users may then loosen if they choose. If Facebook fails to simplify and improve its privacy policy, it will justly risk the wrath of regulators—and many more Facebook suicides自杀.

azure9UID: 2789030

Libel law
Improving a reputation
England’s strict libel laws face a shake-up
May 27th 2010 | From The Economist print edition

SELLING legal services to people in other countries is a lucrative business for Britain, but where the libel industry is concerned the trade is increasingly unwelcome. Foreigners can sue each other in English courts, even when publication has been almost wholly elsewhere. For example, in 2007 a Ukrainian oligarch successfully sued a Ukrainian-based Ukrainian-language website in London.

For foreigners and locals alike, mounting a defence is costly and tricky. Winning a case can still leave a defendant with a six-figure bill. Even the righteous may find it wiser to shut up than pay up. Media outlets complain loudly (and self-interestedly). Some American publications say they may stop selling copies in England to avoid the risk of a costly lawsuit.

But others are upset too. The fear of libel suits may chill academic debate (big medical companies have sued several scientists for criticising their products). Outfits campaigning against beastly regimes abroad say they have had to defang their reports because of the threat of litigation.

Many want the law to be fairer, simpler, quicker and cheaper. In the run-up to Britain’s general election in May, the three main parties all supported change. But for a century efforts to reform libel law thoroughly have foundered on a combination of lawyerly self-interest, bureaucratic timidity and a quiet belief among many lawmakers that the media is already too careless with other people’s reputations (not least with politicians’ good names).

Anthony Lester QC, a Liberal Democrat member of the House of Lords and a prominent libel lawyer, hopes to change that. On May 26th he submitted a private member’s bill which would make most of the important changes that reformers have been seeking. One would replace the flimsy “fair comment” defence (which easily gets tied up in questions of fact) with a new one of “honest opinion”. That would allow a restaurant critic, for example, to describe food as revolting and inedible, without having to prove it.

A second change would replace the “responsible publication” defence, which puts more weight on procedure than substance, with one of “public interest”. That would be good news for academics and people debating public policy.

A third part of the bill would make it harder for corporate bodies to sue. Moreover, any foreign claimant would have to show that he had suffered “substantial harm” in England. That should make it harder for trigger-happy oligarchs, sheikhs and foreign celebrities to use the threat of a London lawsuit to intimidate critics.

Lord Lester also wants most libel cases to be heard by a judge, not a jury. That would allow trials to be faster and therefore cheaper—though eroding further what some see as a central feature of English justice. The previous government had already agreed that lawyers’ success fees, which can inflate costs hugely, should be limited to a maximum of 10% of the total bill.

The bill would not introduce American-style statutory protection of free speech: the burden of proof would remain with the defendant. Critics of it, such as Paul Tweed, an Irish lawyer, say that it would place too much weight on the interests of the media and not enough on those of the “common man”, who can see his reputation trashed by the rich and powerful. But legal reformers are also looking at promoting other forms of dispute resolution such as mediation—which would be particularly suited to many libel cases where an apology or a clarification, not a courtroom battle and damages, is what claimants seek.

Lord Lester hopes his bill will at least be assigned to a parliamentary committee. This would air matters thoroughly and could provide a template for a later government-sponsored bill. The result might not please everybody. But it would lead to a libel law agreed by lawmakers on the basis of the big issues, rather than the existing raft of precedents, all set by judges dealing with narrow points and particular cases.

azure9UID: 2789030

EDITORIAL NOTEBOOK
Further Thoughts of a Novice E-Reader
By VERLYN KLINKENBORG
Published: May 28, 2010

I have been reading a lot on my iPad recently, and I have some complaints — not about the iPad but about the state of digital reading generally. Reading is a subtle thing, and its subtleties are artifacts of a venerable medium: words printed in ink on paper. Glass and pixels aren’t the same.

When I read a physical book, I don’t have to look anywhere else to find out how far I’ve gotten. The iPad e-reader, iBooks, tries to create the illusion of a physical book. The pages seem to turn, and I can see the edges of those that remain. But it’s fake. There are always exactly six unturned pages, no matter where I am in the book.

Now, a larger problem. Books in their digital format look vastly less “finished,” less genuine. And we can vary their font and type size, making them resemble all the more our own word-processed manuscripts. Your poems — no matter how wretched or wonderful they are — will never look as good as Robert Hass’s poems in the print edition of “The Apple Trees at Olema.” But your poems can look almost exactly as ugly — as e-book-like — as the Kindle version of that collection.

All the e-books I’ve read have been ugly — books by Chang-rae Lee, Alvin Kernan, Stieg Larsson — though the texts have been wonderful. But I didn’t grow up reading texts. I grew up reading books. The difference is important.

When it comes to digital editions, the assumption seems to be that all books are created equal. Nothing could be further from the truth. In the mass migration from print to digital, we’re seeing a profusion of digital books — many of them out of copyright — that look new and even “HD,” but which may well have been supplanted by more accurate editions and better translations. We need a digital readers’ guide — a place readers can find out whether the book they’re about to download is the best available edition.

And finally, two related problems. I already have a personal library. But most of the books I’ve ever read have come from lending libraries. Barnes & Noble has released an e-reader that allows short-term borrowing of some books. The entire impulse behind Amazon’s Kindle and Apple’s iBooks assumes that you cannot read a book unless you own it first — and only you can read it unless you want to pass on your device.

That goes against the social value of reading, the collective knowledge and collaborative discourse that comes from access to shared libraries. That is not a good thing for readers, authors, publishers or our culture.

polosongruiUID: 2595436

Libel law
诽谤法
Improving a reputationEngland’s strict libel laws face a shake-up革新
May 27th 2010 | From The Economist print edition
SELLING legal services to people in other countries is a lucrative赚钱的，可获利的 business for Britain, but where the libel industry is concerned the trade is increasingly unwelcome. Foreigners can sue控告，起诉 each other in English courts, even when publication has been almost wholly完全地，全部地 elsewhere. For example, in 2007 a Ukrainian乌克兰的
oligarch寡头政治的独裁者 successfully sued a Ukrainian-based Ukrainian-language website in London.
For foreigners and locals alike, mounting a defence is costly and tricky. Winning a case can still leave a defendant with a six-figure bill. Even the righteous正直的，正当的，公正的 may find it wiser to shut up than pay up. Media outlets complain loudly (and self-interestedly). Some American publications say they may stop selling copies in England to avoid the risk of a costly lawsuit民事) 诉讼 (案件.
But others are upset too. The fear of libel suits起诉，诉讼 may chill使变冷 academic debate (big medical companies have sued several scientists for criticising their products). Outfits campaigning against beastly残忍的；卑鄙的 regimes政治制度，政权 abroad say they have had to defang拔去 ... 的尖牙 their reports because of the threat of litigation诉讼.
Many want the law to be fairer, simpler, quicker and cheaper. In the run-up事件预备阶段 to Britain’s general election in May, the three main parties all supported change. But for a century efforts to reform libel law thoroughly have foundered on a combination of lawyerly律师的 self-interest, bureaucratic官僚政治的; 官僚作风的
timidity胆怯 and a quiet belief among many lawmakers that the media is already too careless with other people’s reputations (not least with politicians’ good names).
Anthony Lester QC, a Liberal Democrat自由民主党 member of the House of Lords and a prominent libel lawyer, hopes to change that. On May 26th he submitted a private member’s bill which would make most of the important changes that reformers have been seeking. One would replace the flimsy轻而薄的；易损坏的 “fair comment公正评论” defence (which easily gets tied up in questions of fact) with a new one of “honest opinion”. That would allow a restaurant critic, for example, to describe food as revolting令人厌恶的 and inedible不能吃的，不宜食用的, without having to prove it.
A second change would replace the “responsible publication” defence, which puts more weight on procedure than substance, with one of “public interest”. That would be good news for academics and people debating public policy.
A third part of the bill would make it harder for corporate bodies to sue. Moreover, any foreign claimant提出要求者; 索赔人; 认领人 would have to show that he had suffered “substantial harm” in England. That should make it harder for trigger-happy乱开枪的，好战的 oligarchs, sheikhs阿拉伯酋长，阿拉伯族长，风流情郎 and foreign celebrities to use the threat of a London lawsuit to intimidate恐吓，威胁 critics.
Lord Lester also wants most libel cases to be heard by a judge, not a jury陪审团；(竞赛或展览的)评判委员会. That would allow trials审判 to be faster and therefore cheaper—though eroding further what some see as a central feature of English justice. The previous government had already agreed that lawyers’ success fees, which can inflate使膨胀；使骄傲；抬高(物价) costs hugely, should be limited to a maximum of 10% of the total bill.
The bill would not introduce American-style statutory法定的，法规的，依照法令的
protection of free speech: the burden of proof would remain with the defendant. Critics of it, such as Paul Tweed, an Irish lawyer, say that it would place too much weight on the interests of the media and not enough on those of the “common man”, who can see his reputation trashed捣毁 by the rich and powerful. But legal reformers are also looking at promoting other forms of disputen.争论，争端 resolution such as mediation调停,仲裁—which would be particularly suited to many libel cases where an apology or a clarification, not a courtroom battle and damages, is what claimants seek.
Lord Lester hopes his bill will at least be assigned to a parliamentary议会的，国会的 committee. This would air通风,晾干 matters thoroughly and could provide a template样板,模板
for a later government-sponsored bill. The result might not please everybody. But it would lead to a libel law agreed by lawmakers on the basis of the big issues, rather than the existing raft of precedents先例，范例，判例；惯例, all set by judges dealing with narrow points and particular cases.

polosongruiUID: 2595436

Editorial Notebook

Further Thoughts of a Novice E-Reader

By VERLYN KLINKENBORG

Published: May 28, 2010

I have been reading a lot on my iPad recently, and I have some complaints — not about the iPad but about the state of digital reading generally. Reading is a subtle微妙的 thing, and its subtleties狡猾，微妙(的感情)
are artifacts of a venerable受尊敬的 medium: words printed in ink on paper. Glass and pixels像素 aren’t the same.

When I read a physical book, I don’t have to look anywhere else to find out how far I’ve gotten. The iPad e-reader, iBooks, tries to create the illusion of a physical book. The pages seem to turn, and I can see the edges of those that remain. But it’s fake假的. There are always exactly six unturned pages, no matter where I am in the book.

Now, a larger problem. Books in their digital format look vastly less “finished,” less genuine真实. And we can vary their font and type size, making them resemble像 all the more our own word-processed manuscripts草稿. Your poems — no matter how wretched or wonderful they are — will never look as good as Robert Hass’s poems in the print edition of “The Apple Trees at Olema.” But your poems can look almost exactly as ugly — as e-book-like — as the Kindle version of that collection.

All the e-books I’ve read have been ugly — books by Chang-rae Lee, Alvin Kernan, Stieg Larsson — though the texts have been wonderful. But I didn’t grow up reading texts. I grew up reading books. The difference is important.

When it comes to digital editions, the assumption假设 seems to be that all books are created equal. Nothing could be further from the truth. In the mass migration移动 from print to digital, we’re seeing a profusion丰富 of digital books — many of them out of copyright — that look new and even “HD,” but which may well have been supplanted代替 by more accurate editions and better translations. We need a digital readers’ guide — a place readers can find out whether the book they’re about to download is the best available edition.

And finally, two related problems. I already have a personal library. But most of the books I’ve ever read have come from lending libraries. Barnes & Noble has released发布 an e-reader that allows short-term borrowing of some books. The entire impulse推动 behind Amazon’s Kindle and Apple’s iBooks assumes that you cannot read a book unless you own it first — and only you can read it unless you want to pass on your device.

That goes against the social value of reading, the collective knowledge and collaborative合作 discourse that comes from access to shared libraries. That is not a good thing for readers, authors, publishers or our culture.

azure9UID: 2789030

The rise and rise of English
Top dog
The world's language is Globish
May 27th 2010 | From The Economist print edition

ENGLISH is what matters. It has displaced rivals to become the language of diplomacy, of business, of science, of the internet and of world culture. Many more people speak Chinese—but even they, in vast numbers, are trying to learn English. So how did it happen, and why? Robert McCrum’s entertaining book tells the story of the triumph of English—and the way in which the language is now liberated from its original owners.

The author’s knack for finding nuggets enriches what might otherwise seem a rather panoramic take on world history from Tacitus to Twitter. Take the beginnings of bilingualism in India, for example, which has stoked the growth of the biggest English-speaking middle class in the new Anglosphere. That stems from a proposal by an English historian, Thomas Macaulay, in 1835, to train a new class of English speakers: “A class of persons, Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinion, in morals, and in intellect.” At a stroke, notes Mr McCrum, English became the “language of government, education and advancement, at once a symbol of imperial rule as well as of self-improvement”. India’s English-speaking middle class is now one of the engines of that country’s development and a big asset in the race to catch up with China.

Bit by bit, English displaced French from diplomacy and German from science. The reason for this was America’s rise and the lasting bonds created by the British empire. But the elastic, forgiving nature of the language itself was another. English allows plenty of sub-variants, from Singlish in Singapore to Estglish in Estonia: the main words are familiar, but plenty of new ones dot the lexicon, along with idiosyncratic grammar and syntax.

Mr McCrum hovers over this point, but does not nail it. English as spoken by non-natives is different. The nuanced, idiomatic English of Britons, North Americans, Antipodeans (and Indians) can be hard to understand. Listen to a Korean businessman negotiating with a Pole in English and you will hear the difference: the language is curt, emphatic, stripped-down. Yet within “Globish”, as Mr McCrum neatly names it, hierarchies are developing. Those who can make jokes (or flirt) in Globish score over those who can’t. Expressiveness counts, in personal and professional life.

The big shift is towards a universally useful written Globish. Spellchecking and translation software mean that anyone can communicate in comprehensible written English. That skill once required mastery of orthographical codes and subtle syntax acquired over years. The English of e-mail, Twitter and text messaging is becoming far more mutually comprehensible than spoken English, which is fractured by differences in pronunciation, politeness and emphasis. Mr McCrum aptly names the new lingo “a thoroughfare for all thoughts”. Perhaps he should have written that chapter in Globish, to show its strengths—and limitations.

azure9UID: 2789030

Published: May 30, 2010
OP-CHART
The Great Unknowns
By ROBERT M. POOLE and RUMORS

The blessings of war are few, but one hard- won result of the nation’s conflicts is expertise in accounting for the dead. The Revolutionary War, the War of 1812 and the Mexican War together claimed some 58,000 lives, on and off the battlefield. But lax records and hasty on-site burials meant the number of unknown fatalities from those formative American wars remains a mystery.

Record-keeping improved with the Civil War, still the nation’s deadliest conflict. But because the conflict involved millions of men, shifting fronts and hurried burials, the percentage of soldiers who went to their graves without names is astounding: more than two in five were never identified.

Determined to do better, the United States fielded specialty teams to recover and identify its fallen soldiers and sailors from the Spanish-American War, bringing thousands home from Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines for burial. As a result, the percentage of unknowns plummeted. The number of total American deaths from World War I, the first conflict of truly global proportions, shocked the nation: 116,000 deaths in about 18 months of fighting.

In 1921, the unidentified remains of one of those soldiers became the first body interred at Arlington National Cemetery’s Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

Nevertheless, because of advances in battlefield recovery, better records and the introduction of dog tags, the number of unknowns in our first great war dropped markedly, to about 2 percent, a rate that held through World War II and the Korean conflict.
Thanks to refinements in forensic dentistry and the use of X-rays and CAT scans, the number of unknowns has continued to dwindle with each subsequent war. In 1998, Arlington’s unknown service member from the Vietnam War, who was buried in May 1984, was disinterred and identified as First Lt. Michael J. Blassie, an airman shot down in 1972. With elaborate honors, he was returned to his hometown, St. Louis. His tomb at Arlington remains empty, marking the first 20th century conflict for which there is no unknown warrior.

In the three major wars since — the Persian Gulf war and the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan — there has not been a single unknown soldier, and only one combatant has been listed as missing in action: Capt. Michael Speicher, who was shot down over Iraq in 1991. His remains were recovered from the Iraqi desert in August 2009 and returned to his family.

The sad reality is that there will likely be new recruits for Arlington’s ranks, now 300,000 strong. Though all losses are painful, perhaps we can take some consolation in the knowledge that the names of those who will sacrifice so much are unlikely to go unknown.

lty900301UID: 2715509

19-1 The rise and rise of English Top dog The world's language is Globish May 27th 2010 | From The Economist print edition ENGLISH is what matters. It has displaced  rivals to become the language of diplomacy 外交, of business, of science, of the internet and of world culture. Many more people speak Chinese—but even they, in vast numbers, are trying to learn English. So how did it happen, and why? Robert McCrum’s entertaining book tells the story of the triumph of English—and the way in which the language is now liberated from its original owners. The author’s knack for finding nuggets  （天然金块） enriches what might otherwise seem a rather panoramic （全景的） take on world history from Tacitus to Twitter. Take the beginnings of bilingualism in India, for example, which has stoked the growth of the biggest English-speaking middle class in the new Anglosphere. That stems from （起源于） a proposal by an English historian, Thomas Macaulay, in 1835, to train a new class of English speakers: “A class of persons, Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinion, in morals, and in intellect.” At a stroke, notes Mr McCrum, English became the “language of government, education and advancement, at once a symbol of imperial rule as well as of self-improvement”. India’s English-speaking middle class is now one of the engines of that country’s development and a big asset in the race to catch up with China. Bit by bit（渐渐的）, English displaced French from diplomacy and German from science. The reason for this was America’s rise and the lasting bonds（监禁）  created by the British empire. But the elastic, forgiving nature of the language itself was another. English allows plenty of sub-variants （变量）, from Singlish in Singapore to Estglish in Estonia: the main words are familiar, but plenty of new ones dot the lexicon（词典）, along with idiosyncratic （ 特殊的，异质的） grammar and syntax. Mr McCrum hovers over （盘旋） this point, but does not nail it. English as spoken by non-natives is different. The nuanced （细微差别）, idiomatic English of Britons, North Americans, Antipodeans (and Indians) can be hard to understand. Listen to a Korean businessman negotiating with 谈判 a Pole in English and you will hear the difference: the language is curt （简略的）, emphatic , stripped-down拆开. Yet within “Globish”, as Mr McCrum neatly names it, hierarchies are developing. Those who can make jokes (or flirt) in Globish score over those who can’t. Expressiveness counts, in personal and professional life. The big shift is towards a universally useful written Globish. Spellchecking and translation software mean that anyone can communicate in comprehensible written English. That skill once required mastery of orthographical （拼字正确的）l codes and subtle syntax acquired over years. The English of e-mail, Twitter and text messaging is becoming far more mutually comprehensible than spoken English, which is fractured （断裂的） by differences in pronunciation, politeness and emphasis. Mr McCrum aptly  （适当的） names the new lingo “a thoroughfare  for all thoughts”. Perhaps he should have written that chapter in Globish, to show its strengths—and limitations.

franceneUID: 2818958

2010-5-26

OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
Many Faiths, One Truth
By TENZIN GYATSO
Published: May 24, 2010

WHEN I was a boy in Tibet, I felt that my own Buddhist religion must be the best — and that other faiths were somehow inferior. Now I see how naïve I was, and how dangerous the extremes of religious intolerance can be today.
Related

Though intolerance may be as old as religion itself, we still see vigorous signs of its virulence（毒力, 毒性, 恶意）. In Europe, there are intense debates about newcomers wearing veils(面纱, 面罩)or wanting to erect minarets((伊斯兰教寺院的) 尖塔) and episodes of violence against Muslim immigrants. Radical atheists issue blanket condemnations of those who hold to religious beliefs. In the Middle East, the flames of war are fanned by hatred of those who adhere to a different faith.

Such tensions are likely to increase as the world becomes more interconnected and cultures, peoples and religions become ever more entwined. The pressure this creates tests more than our tolerance — it demands that we promote peaceful coexistence and understanding across boundaries.

Granted, every religion has a sense of exclusivity as part of its core identity. Even so, I believe there is genuine potential for mutual understanding. While preserving faith toward one’s own tradition, one can respect, admire and appreciate other traditions.

An early eye-opener for me was my meeting with the Trappist monk Thomas Merton in India shortly before his untimely death in 1968. Merton told me he could be perfectly faithful to Christianity, yet learn in depth from other religions like Buddhism. The same is true for me as an ardent(热心的)Buddhist learning from the world’s other great religions.

A main point in my discussion with Merton was how central compassion was to the message of both Christianity and Buddhism. In my readings of the New Testament, I find myself inspired by Jesus’ acts of compassion. His miracle of the loaves and fishes, his healing and his teaching are all motivated by the desire to relieve suffering.

I’m a firm believer in the power of personal contact to bridge differences, so I’ve long been drawn to dialogues with people of other religious outlooks. The focus on compassion that Merton and I observed in our two religions strikes me as a strong unifying thread among all the major faiths. And these days we need to highlight what unifies us.

Take Judaism, for instance. I first visited a synagogue in Cochin, India, in 1965, and have met with many rabbis over the years. I remember vividly the rabbi in the Netherlands who told me about the Holocaust(大毁灭, 大屠杀)with such intensity that we were both in tears. And I’ve learned how the Talmud and the Bible repeat the theme of compassion, as in the passage in Leviticus that admonishes(劝告, 训诫, 警告), “Love your neighbor as yourself.”

In my many encounters with Hindu scholars in India, I’ve come to see the centrality of selfless compassion in Hinduism too — as expressed, for instance, in the Bhagavad Gita, which praises those who “delight in the welfare of all beings.” I’m moved by the ways this value has been expressed in the life of great beings like Mahatma Gandhi, or the lesser-known Baba Amte, who founded a leper(麻疯病患者, 受蔑视的人)colony（聚居地，居住区 如失业救济， 收容难民等）not far from a Tibetan settlement in Maharashtra State in India. There he fed and sheltered lepers who were otherwise shunned(避开, 避免). When I received my Nobel Peace Prize, I made a donation to his colony.

Compassion is equally important in Islam — and recognizing that has become crucial in the years since Sept. 11, especially in answering those who paint Islam as a militant faith. On the first anniversary of 9/11, I spoke at the National Cathedral in Washington, pleading that we not blindly follow the lead of some in the news media and let the violent acts of a few individuals define an entire religion.

Let me tell you about the Islam I know. Tibet has had an Islamic community for around 400 years, although my richest contacts with Islam have been in India, which has the world’s second-largest Muslim population. An imam in Ladakh once told me that a true Muslim should love and respect all of Allah’s creatures. And in my understanding, Islam enshrines（入庙祀奉, 铭记）compassion as a core spiritual principle, reflected in the very name of God, the “Compassionate and Merciful,” that appears at the beginning of virtually each chapter of the Koran.

Finding common ground among faiths can help us bridge needless divides at a time when unified action is more crucial than ever. As a species, we must embrace the oneness of humanity as we face global issues like pandemics（全国[全世界]性的流行病, 大疫）, economic crises and ecological disaster. At that scale, our response must be as one.

Harmony among the major faiths has become an essential ingredient of peaceful coexistence in our world. From this perspective, mutual understanding among these traditions is not merely the business of religious believers — it matters for the welfare of humanity as a whole.

franceneUID: 2818958

17-2
本帖最后由 azure9 于 2010-5-29 14:22 编辑

Education: Through the Wall of Ignorance
Monday, Apr. 21, 1947
—The Bill of Rights (1791)

Ever since this clause was written into the Bill of Rights, most Americans have considered the separation of church & state beyond debate. But an increasing number of Americans also deplore  表示悲痛one by-product of this separation, which the Founding Fathers probably never had in mind: the almost complete exclusion of religion from the public schools and colleges.
In many state-operated schools, religion is as unmentionable  不宜说出口 as syphilis 梅毒 was in Victorian parlors. Result: a generation of religious illiterates文盲—who perhaps know how to read & write, but not how, why or what to believe.

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

Last week, after more than two years' study, the committee published its conclusions, The Relation oj Religion to Public Education (American Council on Education; $1). Main thesis, as summed up by George Zook: "Schools should accept religion and the churches as a factor of social life, just as much as they do the waterworks." The committee proposed to teach about religion, but not to teach religion itself, in the schools. For a while the group had considered a proposal to find and teach a set of principles common to all faiths (e.g., some form of Golden Rule), but rejected this as "watered-down"  掺水的religion acceptable to nobody.

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

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

The committee's ideas on how to break through the wall:
"In the study of ... community life—government, markets, industry, labor, welfare, and the like—there [is no] reason for the omission  冗长 of contemporary religious institutions and practices."

"The study of the religious classics . . . in the regular literature program [should be expanded]. . . . The Bible is second to none among the books that have influenced the thought and ideals of the Western world. [It deserves study] conducted with at least as much respect as is given to the great secular  长期的 classics, and devoid  全无的 of arbitrary interpretations to the same extent. . . ."

"To confine the teaching of religion to separate 'religious courses' tends toward . . . splitting off of religion from the rest of life. . . . [Religious education] is not something to be added on to the school curriculum, but rather something to be integrated with it"—in existing classes on history, sociology, psychology, economics, philosophy, literature, music, the fine arts.

Concluded the committee: "On all sides we see the disintegration  瓦解 of loyalties . . . the revival of ancient prejudices, the increase of frustrations, the eclipse of使黯然失色 hope. . . . Religion at its best has always been an integrating force, a spiritual tonic  滋补品for a soul racked  使痛苦by fear and cringing  阿谀逢迎 in weakness. ... Its imperfections will not be lessened by an attitude of splendid isolation on the part of intellectuals, or of indifference on the part of those responsible for the education of youth."

franceneUID: 2818958

19-1
The rise and rise of English
Top dog
The world's language is Globish
May 27th 2010 | From The Economist print edition

ENGLISH is what matters. It has displaced  取代，置换 rivals to become the language of diplomacy 外交, of business, of science, of the internet and of world culture. Many more people speak Chinese—but even they, in vast numbers, are trying to learn English. So how did it happen, and why? Robert McCrum’s entertaining book tells the story of the triumph  成功of English—and the way in which the language is now liberated from its original owners.

The author’s knack  诀窍 for finding nuggets  天然金块 enriches what might otherwise seem a rather panoramic  全景的 take on world history from Tacitus to Twitter. Take the beginnings of bilingualism in India, for example, which has stoked the growth of the biggest English-speaking middle class in the new Anglosphere. That stems from 起源于 a proposal by an English historian, Thomas Macaulay, in 1835, to train a new class of English speakers: “A class of persons, Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinion, in morals, and in intellect.” At a stroke, notes Mr McCrum, English became the “language of government, education and advancement, at once a symbol of imperial  皇帝的 rule as well as of self-improvement”. India’s English-speaking middle class is now one of the engines of that country’s development and a big asset in the race to catch up with China.

Bit by bit 渐渐的, English displaced French from diplomacy and German from science. The reason for this was America’s rise and the lasting bonds监禁  created by the British empire. But the elastic, forgiving nature of the language itself was another. English allows plenty of sub-variants 变量, from Singlish in Singapore to Estglish in Estonia: the main words are familiar, but plenty of new ones dot the lexicon词典, along with idiosyncratic  特殊的，异质的 grammar and syntax.

Mr McCrum hovers over 盘旋 this point, but does not nail it. English as spoken by non-natives is different. The nuanced 细微差别, idiomatic 惯用的，合乎语言习惯的 English of Britons, North Americans, Antipodeans (and Indians) can be hard to understand. Listen to a Korean businessman negotiating with 谈判 a Pole in English and you will hear the difference: the language is curt 简略的, emphatic 语势强的, stripped-down拆开. Yet within “Globish”, as Mr McCrum neatly names it, hierarchies are developing. Those who can make jokes (or flirt) in Globish score over those who can’t. Expressiveness counts, in personal and professional life.

The big shift is towards a universally useful written Globish. Spellchecking and translation software mean that anyone can communicate in comprehensible written English. That skill once required mastery of orthographical 拼字正确的l codes and subtle syntax acquired over years. The English of e-mail, Twitter and text messaging is becoming far more mutually comprehensible than spoken English, which is fractured 断裂的 by differences in pronunciation, politeness and emphasis. Mr McCrum aptly  适当的 names the new lingo  方言 “a thoroughfare  通路，大路 for all thoughts”. Perhaps he should have written that chapter in Globish, to show its strengths—and limitations.