1010G【fish】COMMENTS

polosongruiUID: 2595436

The rise and rise of English
Top dogThe world's language is GlobishMay 27th 2010 | From The Economist print edition
ENGLISH is what matters. It has displaced取代；迫使…离开家园，使离开原位 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解放，使获自由；释出，放出 from its original owners.
The author’s knack特殊能力，窍门 for finding nuggets矿块 enriches what might otherwise seem a rather panoramic全象的 take on world history from Tacitus to Twitter. Take the beginnings of bilingualism习用两种语言; 能用两种语言in India, for example, which has stoked激起 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一下子, 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 elasticn.橡皮圈，松紧带 a.有弹性的；灵活的, 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打点于；散布于，点缀 the lexicon词典, along with idiosyncratic特有的 grammar and syntax句法.
Mr McCrum hovers翱翔，盘旋；徘徊；彷徨，犹豫 over this point, but does not nail钉，钉牢 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洽谈，协商；谈判；顺利通过，成功越过 with a Pole in English and you will hear the difference: the language is curt唐突的, emphatic强调的，着重的；无可置疑的，明显的, stripped.脱光衣服；剥夺-down. Yet within “Globish”, as Mr McCrum neatly names it, hierarchies等级制度；统治集团，领导层 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精通；控制；优势 of orthographical正交的 codes and subtle syntax acquired over years. The English of e-mail, Twitter and text messaging is becoming far more mutually互相地
comprehensible than spoken English, which is fractured.(使)断裂，(使)折断 by differences in pronunciation, politeness and emphasis. Mr McCrum aptly适当地,合宜地 names the new lingo “a thoroughfare for all thoughts”. Perhaps he should have written that chapter in Globish, to show its strengths—and limitations.

lty900301UID: 2715509

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(gained by great effort) 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(松的，不严格的，松懈的) records and hasty（匆忙的，轻率的） 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（致命的，致死的）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（垂直落下）. 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(to deposit(a dead body)in the earth or in a tomb) 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 (to become steadily less) with each subsequent(后来的，并发的) 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(a man engaged or experienced in warfare broadly: a person engaged in some struggle or conflict<poverty warriors>).

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(one that is engaged in or ready to engage in combat) 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.

franceneUID: 2818958

19-2
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 对……负责 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  松懈的 records and hasty on-site burials meant the number of unknown fatalities  灾难，不幸 from those formative  格式化 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 令人惊骇的: 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 垂直落下. 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  未经确认的 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 精致 in forensic 法院的，公开辩论的 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  掘出 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.

azure9UID: 2789030

India’s cantilevered economy
Taking a high road
A strong, well-balanced recovery
Jun 1st 2010 | From The Economist online

ATHLETES competing in this year’s Commonwealth Games held in Delhi will travel to the stadium along the Barapullah Elevated Road, one of many transport projects sprouting up in India’s capital city. Half-built sections of the road loom dramatically over the streets below, as if straining to reach the concrete supports on the other side.

India’s economy has taken a similarly elevated route through the global financial turmoil. Its growth never fell below 5.8% (see chart), thanks to a timely fiscal splurge. But just as a cantilever cannot extend too far before it buckles, so an economy cannot place too much weight on a single source of support. India’s merits special caution, its budget deficit topping 10% of GDP in the fiscal year that ended on March 31st.

The growth figures released on May 31st were therefore doubly welcome. They showed that India’s GDP expanded by 8.6% in the year to the first quarter. And as heartening as the rate of growth was its source: investment in fixed assets (such as elevated roads) accounted for more than half of it; government consumption contributed hardly at all.

By “stepping up” its investments, “industry has shown its confidence in the economic recovery," said Chandrajit Banerjee of the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII). The biggest bets are being placed by India’s mobile-telephone operators, who bid no less than 677.2 billion rupees ($14.6 billion) between them in the government’s recent auction of the airwaves for speedy third-generation (3G) networks. A second auction now under way may raise another 300 billion rupees from firms seeking to offer broadband internet over wireless networks.

This windfall, far exceeding the government’s target of a total 350 billion rupees, will help it narrow its budget gap this year. But the government’s gain was the telecoms industry’s loss. To compete in the auction, mobile operators have borrowed heavily, some from overseas. Instead of India’s government owing money to sleepy domestic bondholders then, India’s most dynamic companies now owe money to foreign creditors. Whether this helps the economy or not will depend on whether the government spends the auction proceeds better than the telecoms companies would have done.

If a slowdown in government outlays was welcome, a slowdown in private consumption, which grew by only 2.6% in the year to the first quarter, was not. The CII blamed this weakness on high prices, which have dogged the government’s second term. In a press conference on May 24th, Manmohan Singh, India’s prime minister, singled out inflation as a "matter of deep concern", but pointed to signs of a "moderating trend".

He’s right to point out that wholesale-price inflation has eased, from over 10% in February to 9.6% in April, compared with a year earlier. But even as the cost of foods (including manufactured foods, such as sugar and dairy) begins to fall, the price of other manufactured goods is gathering some momentum. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI), which has raised interest rates twice this year, still has work to do.

The pace of rate hikes will be governed by two imponderables: the monsoon, which is now sweeping up the coastal state of Kerala, and the squalls on world financial markets, which have swept outwards from Greece. If the monsoon lives up to expectations, the prospect of a good summer harvest will help to quell food inflation. That will, in turn, lower inflation expectations, making the RBI’s life easier. By the same token, bad financial weather may keep interest rates low around the globe. If so, the RBI will be wary of raising its own rates too far ahead of other central banks.

The RBI worries that higher rates could invite heavier inflows of foreign capital. This would push up the rupee, damaging India’s exporters. Overseas investors traditionally flee emerging markets in periods of global financial angst. But an economy growing at 8.6% may look a safer bet than the moribund markets of Europe and America. Rohini Malkani of Citigroup points out that Indian companies were able to borrow $4.3 billion overseas in March, the most they have in two years. Prominent among the companies raising money were India’s infrastructure firms and its telephone operators.

That leaves India’s policymakers with a big strategic decision. They could rebuff this foreign capital, by tightening caps, regulations and other restrictions on foreign investment. Or they could take advantage of it, betting that a stronger rupee is a worthwhile price to pay for faster telecoms networks and elevated roads over India’s congested city streets.

azure9UID: 2789030

OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
Israeli Force, Adrift on the Sea
By Amos Oz
Published: June 1, 2010

FOR 2,000 years, the Jews knew the force of force only in the form of lashes to our own backs. For several decades now, we have been able to wield force ourselves — and this power has, again and again, intoxicated us.

In the period before Israel was founded, a large portion of the Jewish population in Palestine, especially members of the extremely nationalist Irgun group, thought that military force could be used to achieve any goal, to drive the British out of the country, and to repel the Arabs who opposed the creation of our state.

Luckily, during Israel’s early years, prime ministers like David Ben-Gurion and Levi Eshkol knew very well that force has its limits and were careful to use it only as a last resort. But ever since the Six-Day War in 1967, Israel has been fixated on military force. To a man with a big hammer, says the proverb, every problem looks like a nail.

Israel’s siege of the Gaza Strip and Monday’s violent interception of civilian vessels carrying humanitarian aid there are the rank products of this mantra that what can’t be done by force can be done with even greater force. This view originates in the mistaken assumption that Hamas’s control of Gaza can be ended by force of arms or, in more general terms, that the Palestinian problem can be crushed instead of solved.

But Hamas is not just a terrorist organization. Hamas is an idea, a desperate and fanatical idea that grew out of the desolation and frustration of many Palestinians. No idea has ever been defeated by force — not by siege, not by bombardment, not by being flattened with tank treads and not by marine commandos. To defeat an idea, you have to offer a better idea, a more attractive and acceptable one.

Thus, the only way for Israel to edge out Hamas would be to quickly reach an agreement with the Palestinians on the establishment of an independent state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip as defined by the 1967 borders, with its capital in East Jerusalem. Israel has to sign a peace agreement with President Mahmoud Abbas and his Fatah government in the West Bank — and by doing so, reduce the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to a conflict between Israel and the Gaza Strip. That latter conflict, in turn, can be resolved only by negotiating with Hamas or, more reasonably, by the integration of Fatah with Hamas.

Even if Israel seizes 100 more ships on their way to Gaza, even if Israel sends in troops to occupy the Gaza Strip 100 more times, no matter how often Israel deploys its military, police and covert power, force cannot solve the problem that we are not alone in this land, and the Palestinians are not alone in this land. We are not alone in Jerusalem and the Palestinians are not alone in Jerusalem. Until Israelis and Palestinians recognize the logical consequences of this simple fact, we will all live in a permanent state of siege — Gaza under an Israeli siege, Israel under an international and Arab siege.

I do not discount the importance of force. Woe to the country that discounts the efficacy of force. Without it Israel would not be able to survive a single day. But we cannot allow ourselves to forget for even a moment that force is effective only as a preventative — to prevent the destruction and conquest of Israel, to protect our lives and freedom. Every attempt to use force not as a preventive measure, not in self-defense, but instead as a means of smashing problems and squashing ideas, will lead to more disasters, just like the one we brought on ourselves in international waters, opposite Gaza’s shores.

谦行天下UID: 2797557

15-2
Germany vs. Europe
Published: May 26, 2010

Germany’s commitment to the European Union has been central to its postwar rehabilitation and its economic success. For years, Germany played the role in Europe that America so frequently plays globally — the locomotive whose dynamism and demand helps turn around recessions before they deepen into depressions.
Now, at the worst possible moment, Germany is turning to nationalist illusions. Europe’s past economic successes are now viewed as German successes. Europe’s current deep problems are everyone else’s except Germany’s. That is neither realistic nor sustainable. But German politicians and commentators are callously and self-destructively feeding these ideas.

Earlier this year, when Germany was still refusing to participate in a bailout【紧急援助】, the country’s largest newspaper by circulation, Bild, suggested Greece should sell the Acropolis to pay off its bond market creditors. (It estimated the monument could bring in $140 billion.) A senior member of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s party suggested auctioning off【拍卖】 some of Greece’s Aegean islands. Meanwhile, a Bild poll showed a majority of Germans in favor of expelling Greece from the euro.
bailout【紧急援助】

After a rough stretch following reunification, Germany took the tough decisions necessary to restore its competitiveness and revive growth. As a result, it is doing far better than the rest of Europe, with a low fiscal deficit and strong export surpluses. But its export-dependent economy would sputter【气急败坏的说】 if European consumers — its main customers — could no longer afford to buy its goods. German banks lent billions to Greece and other troubled European countries. If things don’t turn around quickly, those loans may have to be written down.

Germany also has contributed less than its fair share to the global stimulus, preferring to free ride on American and Chinese stimulus spending. And the euro’s underlying problem — the lack of an enforceable common fiscal policy, which allowed Greece and the others to rack up【击倒，获胜】 deficits they could not afford — is the responsibility of all the euro’s creators, Germany prominent among them【首当其中】.

Germans have not been eager to hear those less-flattering parts of the story, and their leaders haven’t been eager to tell them. For months, Mrs. Merkel resisted all appeals — by other European leaders and Washington — to, well, be a European leader. When Germany finally agreed to contribute to a bailout fund — under threat of a Continentwide crash — Europe’s economic problems were far worse, and Germany and others had to ante【下赌注】 up a lot more cash.

Europe’s most-troubled economies today — Greece, Spain, Portugal and Italy — bear plenty of responsibility for this mess. They spent lavishly during the bubble. They failed to reform their rigid and inefficient labor markets and to contain their increasingly uncompetitive wage costs. The rest of Europe, including Germany, should have demanded adjustments earlier, but didn’t.

With devaluation not an option for euro members, Europe’s high-deficit countries have been forced into steep tax increases and deep spending cuts to bring their soaring deficits under control and calm the bond markets. Necessary as they are, these cuts also run a very high risk of plunging the Continent into deep recession this year unless Germany offsets【弥补】 them with aggressive stimulus of its own. We hope Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner will remind German officials of that on his visit to Berlin on Thursday.

devaluation：an official lowering of a nation's currency; a decrease in the value of a country's currency relative to that of foreign countries

Instead of committing to more spending, Germany is now preparing a multiyear program of deep spending cuts. Given【考虑到】 its troubled history, we can understand its fear of deficit spending and inflation. But right now more German austerity will likely cripple Europe’s nascent recovery and Germany’s own prosperity. That is another hard truth that Mrs. Merkel needs to tell her party and her country.

谦行天下UID: 2797557

20-1

India’s cantilevered economy
Taking a high road
A strong, well-balanced recovery
Jun 1st 2010 | From The Economist online

cantilever：construct with girders and beams such that only one end is fixed

ATHLETES competing in this year’s Commonwealth Games held in Delhi will travel to the stadium along the Barapullah Elevated Road, one of many transport projects sprouting up in India’s capital city. Half-built sections of the road loom dramatically over the streets below, as if straining to reach the concrete supports on the other side.

India’s economy has taken a similarly elevated route through the global financial turmoil. Its growth never fell below 5.8% (see chart), thanks to a timely fiscal splurge. But just as a cantilever cannot extend too far before it buckles, so an economy cannot place too much weight on a single source of support. India’s merits special caution, its budget deficit topping 10% of GDP in the fiscal year that ended on March 31st.

splurge：an ostentatious display (of effort or extravagance etc.)
buckle：bend out of shape, as under pressure or from heat
merit：be worthy or deserving

The growth figures released on May 31st were therefore doubly welcome. They showed that India’s GDP expanded by 8.6% in the year to the first quarter. And as heartening as the rate of growth was its source: investment in fixed assets (such as elevated roads) accounted for more than half of it; government consumption contributed hardly at all.
doubly：to double the degree
heartening：cheerfully encouraging

By “stepping up” its investments, “industry has shown its confidence in the economic recovery," said Chandrajit Banerjee of the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII). The biggest bets are being placed by India’s mobile-telephone operators, who bid no less than 677.2 billion rupees ($14.6 billion) between them in the government’s recent auction of the airwaves for speedy third-generation (3G) networks. A second auction now under way may raise another 300 billion rupees from firms seeking to offer broadband internet over wireless networks.
step up：speed up

This windfall, far exceeding the government’s target of a total 350 billion rupees, will help it narrow its budget gap this year. But the government’s gain was the telecoms industry’s loss. To compete in the auction, mobile operators have borrowed heavily, some from overseas. Instead of India’s government owing money to sleepy domestic bondholders then, India’s most dynamic companies now owe money to foreign creditors. Whether this helps the economy or not will depend on whether the government spends the auction proceeds better than the telecoms companies would have done.
windfall： sudden happening that brings good fortune (as a sudden opportunity to make money)

If a slowdown in government outlays was welcome, a slowdown in private consumption, which grew by only 2.6% in the year to the first quarter, was not. The CII blamed this weakness on high prices, which have dogged the government’s second term. In a press conference on May 24th, Manmohan Singh, India’s prime minister, singled out inflation as a "matter of deep concern", but pointed to signs of a "moderating trend".
outlay：money paid out
dog：go after with the intent to catch
singled out：select from a group

He’s right to point out that wholesale-price inflation has eased, from over 10% in February to 9.6% in April, compared with a year earlier. But even as the cost of foods (including manufactured foods, such as sugar and dairy) begins to fall, the price of other manufactured goods is gathering some momentum. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI), which has raised interest rates twice this year, still has work to do.

The pace of rate hikes will be governed by two imponderables: the monsoon, which is now sweeping up the coastal state of Kerala, and the squalls on world financial markets, which have swept outwards from Greece. If the monsoon lives up to expectations, the prospect of a good summer harvest will help to quell food inflation. That will, in turn, lower inflation expectations, making the RBI’s life easier. By the same token, bad financial weather may keep interest rates low around the globe. If so, the RBI will be wary of raising its own rates too far ahead of other central banks.

The RBI worries that higher rates could invite heavier inflows of foreign capital. This would push up the rupee, damaging India’s exporters. Overseas investors traditionally flee emerging markets in periods of global financial angst. But an economy growing at 8.6% may look a safer bet than the moribund markets of Europe and America. Rohini Malkani of Citigroup points out that Indian companies were able to borrow $4.3 billion overseas in March, the most they have in two years. Prominent among the companies raising money were India’s infrastructure firms and its telephone operators.

angst：an acute but unspecific feeling of anxiety; usually reserved for philosophical anxiety about the world or about personal freedom

That leaves India’s policymakers with a big strategic decision. They could rebuff this foreign capital, by tightening caps, regulations and other restrictions on foreign investment. Or they could take advantage of it, betting that a stronger rupee is a worthwhile price to pay for faster telecoms networks and elevated roads over India’s congested city streets.
rebuff：reject outright and bluntly

lty900301UID: 2715509

20-1

India’s cantilevered economy
Taking a high road
A strong, well-balanced recovery
Jun 1st 2010 | From The Economist online
ATHLETES competing in this year’s Commonwealth Games held in Delhi will travel to the stadium along the Barapullah Elevated Road, one of many transport projects sprouting(to grow, spring up, or become forth as or as if a sprout) up in India’s capital city. Half-built sections of the road loom(隐约的出现) dramatically over the streets below, as if straining to reach the concrete supports on the other side.
India’s economy has taken a similarly elevated route through the global financial turmoil（骚动，动乱）. Its growth never fell below 5.8% (see chart), thanks to a timely fiscal splurge（什么意思？）. But just as a cantilever cannot extend too far before it buckles, so an economy cannot place too much weight on a single source of support. India’s merits special caution, its budget deficit topping 10% of GDP in the fiscal year that ended on March 31st.
The growth figures released on May 31st were therefore doubly welcome. They showed that India’s GDP expanded by 8.6% in the year to the first quarter. And as heartening as the rate of growth was its source: investment in fixed assets（固定资产） (such as elevated roads) accounted for more than half of it; government consumption contributed hardly at all.
By “stepping up” its investments, “industry has shown its confidence in the economic recovery," said Chandrajit Banerjee of the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII). The biggest bets are being placed by India’s mobile-telephone operators, who bid no less than 677.2 billion rupees ($14.6 billion) between them in the government’s recent auction of the airwaves for speedy third-generation (3G) networks. A second auction now under way may raise another 300 billion rupees from firms seeking to offer broadband internet over wireless networks.
This windfall, far exceeding the government’s target of a total 350 billion rupees, will help it narrow its budget gap this year. But the government’s gain was the telecoms industry’s loss. To compete in the auction, mobile operators have borrowed heavily, some from overseas. Instead of India’s government owing money to sleepy domestic bondholders then, India’s most dynamic companies now owe money to foreign creditors（债权人）. Whether this helps the economy or not will depend on whether the government spends the auction proceeds better than the telecoms companies would have done. （可以背下来的好句子！！）
If a slowdown in government outlays was welcome, a slowdown in private consumption, which grew by only 2.6% in the year to the first quarter, was not.（很漂亮，很自然的一个转折句。学习。） The CII blamed this weakness on high prices, which have dogged the government’s second term. In a press conference on May 24th, Manmohan Singh, India’s prime minister, singled out inflation as a "matter of deep concern", but pointed to signs of a "moderating trend".
He’s right to point out that wholesale-price inflation has eased, from over 10% in February to 9.6% in April, compared with a year earlier. But even as the cost of foods (including manufactured foods, such as sugar and dairy) begins to fall, the price of other manufactured goods is gathering some momentum. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI), which has raised interest rates twice this year, still has work to do.
The pace of rate hikes will be governed by two imponderables（无法确知的事情）: the monsoon（季风）, which is now sweeping up the coastal state of Kerala, and the squalls on world financial markets, which have swept outwards from Greece. If the monsoon lives up to expectations, the prospect of a good summer harvest will help to quell（平息，消除） food inflation. That will, in turn, lower inflation expectations, making the RBI’s life easier. By the same token, bad financial weather may keep interest rates low around the globe. If so, the RBI will be wary(marked by keen caution, cunning, and watchfulness especially in detecting and escaping danger) of raising its own rates too far ahead of other central banks.
The RBI worries that higher rates could invite heavier inflows of foreign capital. This would push up the rupee, damaging India’s exporters. Overseas investors traditionally flee emerging markets in periods of global financial angst. But an economy growing at 8.6% may look a safer bet than the moribund markets of Europe and America. Rohini Malkani of Citigroup points out that Indian companies were able to borrow $4.3 billion overseas in March, the most they have in two years. Prominent among the companies raising money were India’s infrastructure firms and its telephone operators.
That leaves India’s policymakers with a big strategic decision. They could rebuff (to reject or criticize sharply)this foreign capital, by tightening caps, regulations and other restrictions on foreign investment. Or they could take advantage of it, betting that a stronger rupee is a worthwhile price to pay for faster telecoms networks and elevated roads over India’s congested city streets.

polosongruiUID: 2595436

India’s cantilevered economy
Taking a high roadA strong, well-balanced recoveryJun 1st 2010 | From The Economist online

ATHLETES competing in this year’s Commonwealth Games英联邦运动会 held in Delhi will travel to the stadium along the Bahaullah Elevated Road, one of many transport projects sprouting up in India’s capital city. Half-built sections截面，型材 of the road loom dramatically over the streets below, as if straining to reach the concrete supports on the other side.

India’s economy has taken a similarly elevated route through the global financial turmoil金融风暴. Its growth never fell below 5.8% (see chart), thanks to a timely fiscal splurge国库挥霍. But just as a cantilever cannot extend too far before it buckles, so an economy cannot place too much weight on a single source of support. India’s merits功绩 special caution警示, its budget deficit预算赤字 topping 10% of GDP in the fiscal year财政年度 that ended on March 31st.

The growth figures released on May 31st were therefore doubly welcome. They showed that India’s GDP expanded by 8.6% in the year to the first quarter. And as heartening as the rate of growth was its source: investment in fixed assets固定资产投资
(such as elevated roads高架路) accounted for more than half of it; government consumption消耗 contributed hardly at all.

By “stepping up” its investments投资, “industry has shown its confidence in the economic recovery," said Chandrajit Banerjee of the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII). The biggest bets are being placed by India’s mobile-telephone operators电话接线员, who bid投标 no less than 677.2 billion rupees ($14.6 billion) between them in the government’s recent auction of the airwaves for speedy third-generation (3G) networks. A second auction now under way may raise another 300 billion rupees from firms seeking to offer broadband宽带 internet over wireless无线 networks.

This windfall意外收获, far exceeding超过 the government’s target of a total 350 billion rupees, will help it narrow its budget gap this year. But the government’s gain was the telecoms industry’s loss. To compete in the auction, mobile operators have borrowed heavily, some from overseas. Instead of India’s government owing money to sleepy domestic bondholders国债持有者 then, India’s most dynamic动力 companies now owe money to foreign creditors. Whether this helps the economy or not will depend on whether the government spends the auction proceeds better than the telecoms companies would have done.

If a slowdown in government outlays支出 was welcome, a slowdown in private consumption, which grew by only 2.6% in the year to the first quarter, was not. The CII blamed this weakness on high prices, which have dogged the government’s second term. In a press conference on May 24th, Manmohan Singh, India’s prime minister, singled out挑出
inflation通货膨胀 as a "matter of deep concern", but pointed to signs of a "moderating trend".

He’s right to point out that wholesale-price批发价 inflation has eased, from over 10% in February to 9.6% in April, compared with a year earlier. But even as the cost of foods (including manufactured foods, such as sugar and dairy) begins to fall, the price of other manufactured goods is gathering some momentum. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI印度储备银行), which has raised interest rates银行利率 twice this year, still has work to do.

The pace of rate hikes will be governed by two imponderables无法衡量的事情: the monsoon, which is now sweeping up the coastal state of Kerala, and the squalls on world financial markets金融市场, which have swept outwards from Greece. If the monsoon lives up to不辜负
expectations, the prospect前景 of a good summer harvest will help to quell food inflation. That will, in turn, lower inflation expectations, making the RBI’s life easier. By the same token同样地, bad financial weather may keep interest rates low around the globe. If so, the RBI will be wary of提防
raising its own rates too far ahead of other central banks.

The RBI worries that higher rates could invite heavier inflows 流入of foreign capital. This would push up the rupee, damaging India’s exporters. Overseas investors traditionally flee逃避
emerging markets in periods of global financial angst. But an economy growing at 8.6% may look a safer bet than the moribund markets of Europe and America. Rohini Malkani of Citigroup points out that Indian companies were able to borrow $4.3 billion overseas in March, the most they have in two years. Prominent among the companies raising money were India’s infrastructure基础设施 firms and its telephone operators.

That leaves India’s policymakers决策者 with a big strategic decision战略决策. They could rebuff 回绝this foreign capital, by tightening caps, regulations and other restrictions on foreign investment. Or they could take advantage of it, betting that a stronger rupee is a worthwhile price to pay for faster telecoms networks and elevated roads over India’s congested city streets.

polosongruiUID: 2595436

Op-Ed Contributor

Israeli以色列共和国的 Force, Adrift漂泊的，漫无目的的 on the Sea

By Amos Oz

Published: June 1, 2010

FOR 2,000 years, the Jews犹太人 knew the force of force only in the form of lashes鞭打；眼睫毛 to our own backs. For several decades now, we have been able to wield行使，运用，支配；挥，使用(武器等 force ourselves — and this power has, again and again, intoxicated使喝醉；使陶醉，使欣喜若狂 us.

In the period before Israel was founded, a large portion of the Jewish population in Palestine巴勒斯坦, especially members of the extremely nationalist Irgun group, thought that military force could be used to achieve any goal, to drive the British out of the country, and to repel使厌恶；击退，逐回，驱除；排斥 the Arabs who opposed the creation of our state.

Luckily, during Israel’s early years, prime ministers like David Ben-Gurion and Levi Eshkol knew very well that force has its limits and were careful to use it only as a last resort求助(或凭借)(对象)，采用(的办法). But ever since the Six-Day War in 1967, Israel has been fixated on military force. To a man with a big hammer, says the proverb, every problem looks like a nail.

Israel’s siege包围，围困 of the Gaza Strip and Monday’s violent interception拦截；截击；截取；截住，截断；窃听 of civilian平民，百姓 vessels船，舰；容器，器皿；导管，血管 carrying humanitarian人道主义的 aid there are the rank products of this mantra that what can’t be done by force can be done with even greater force. This view originates in the mistaken assumption that Hamas’s control of Gaza can be ended by force of arms or, in more general terms, that the Palestinian problem can be crushed instead of solved.

But Hamas is not just a terrorist organization. Hamas is an idea, a desperate绝望的 and fanatical不理智的 idea that grew out of the desolation and frustration of many Palestinians. No idea has ever been defeated by force — not by siege, not by bombardment用炮弹、导弹或语言）炮轰，攻击＝attack, not by being flattened with tank treads and not by marine commandos. To defeat an idea, you have to offer a better idea, a more attractive and acceptable one.

Thus, the only way for Israel to edge out取代，挤掉，以微弱之差击败 Hamas would be to quickly reach an agreement with the Palestinians on the establishment of an independent state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip as defined by the 1967 borders, with its capital in East Jerusalem. Israel has to sign a peace agreement with President Mahmoud Abbas and his Fatah government in the West Bank — and by doing so, reduce the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to a conflict between Israel and the Gaza Strip. That latter conflict, in turn, can be resolved only by negotiating with Hamas or, more reasonably, by the integration of Fatah with Hamas.

Even if Israel seizes 100 more ships on their way to Gaza, even if Israel sends in troops to occupy the Gaza Strip 100 more times, no matter how often Israel deploys its military, police and covert power, force cannot solve the problem that we are not alone in this land, and the Palestinians are not alone in this land. We are not alone in Jerusalem and the Palestinians are not alone in Jerusalem. Until Israelis and Palestinians recognize the logical consequences of this simple fact, we will all live in a permanent state of siege — Gaza under an Israeli siege, Israel under an international and Arab siege.

I do not discount the importance of force. Woe悲痛；灾难 to the country that discounts the efficacy功效,效力 of force. Without it Israel would not be able to survive a single day. But we cannot allow ourselves to forget for even a moment that force is effective only as a preventative — to prevent the destruction and conquest攻取，征服，克服 of Israel, to protect our lives and freedom. Every attempt to use force not as a preventive measure, not in self-defense, but instead as a means of smashing粉碎；狠打；猛冲 n.破碎(声)；猛击 problems and squashing压碎；硬塞；镇住 n.壁球；果汁汽水 ideas, will lead to more disasters, just like the one we brought on ourselves in international waters, opposite Gaza’s shores.

谦行天下UID: 2797557

20-2

OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
Israeli Force, Adrift on the Sea
By Amos Oz
Published: June 1, 2010

FOR 2,000 years, the Jews knew the force of force only in the form of lashes to our own backs. For several decades now, we have been able to wield force ourselves — and this power has, again and again, intoxicated us.
lashes to (用绳等)将…捆到…上
wield：handle effectively
intoxicated：stupefied or excited by a chemical substance (especially alcohol)

In the period before Israel was founded, a large portion of the Jewish population in Palestine, especially members of the extremely nationalist Irgun group, thought that military force could be used to achieve any goal, to drive the British out of the country, and to repel the Arabs who opposed the creation of our state.

Luckily, during Israel’s early years, prime ministers like David Ben-Gurion and Levi Eshkol knew very well that force has its limits and were careful to use it only as a last resort. But ever since the Six-Day War in 1967, Israel has been fixated on military force. To a man with a big hammer, says the proverb, every problem looks like a nail.
as a last resort：万不得已（作为最后手段）


Israel’s siege of the Gaza Strip and Monday’s violent interception of civilian vessels carrying humanitarian aid there are the rank products of this mantra that what can’t be done by force can be done with even greater force. This view originates in the mistaken assumption that Hamas’s control of Gaza can be ended by force of arms or, in more general terms, that the Palestinian problem can be crushed instead of solved.
interception：the act of intercepting; preventing something from proceeding or arriving

But Hamas is not just a terrorist organization. Hamas is an idea, a desperate and fanatical idea that grew out of the desolation and frustration of many Palestinians. No idea has ever been defeated by force — not by siege, not by bombardment, not by being flattened with tank treads and not by marine commandos. To defeat an idea, you have to offer a better idea, a more attractive and acceptable one.

Thus, the only way for Israel to edge out Hamas would be to quickly reach an agreement with the Palestinians on the establishment of an independent state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip as defined by the 1967 borders, with its capital in East Jerusalem. Israel has to sign a peace agreement with President Mahmoud Abbas and his Fatah government in the West Bank — and by doing so, reduce the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to a conflict between Israel and the Gaza Strip. That latter conflict, in turn, can be resolved only by negotiating with Hamas or, more reasonably, by the integration of Fatah with Hamas.
edge out：美国英语]以微弱优势击败，险胜

Even if Israel seizes 100 more ships on their way to Gaza, even if Israel sends in troops to occupy the Gaza Strip 100 more times, no matter how often Israel deploys its military, police and covert power, force cannot solve the problem that we are not alone in this land, and the Palestinians are not alone in this land. We are not alone in Jerusalem and the Palestinians are not alone in Jerusalem. Until Israelis and Palestinians recognize the logical consequences of this simple fact, we will all live in a permanent state of siege — Gaza under an Israeli siege, Israel under an international and Arab siege.
covert：secret or hidden; not openly practiced or engaged in or shown or avowed

I do not discount the importance of force. Woe to the country that discounts the efficacy of force. Without it Israel would not be able to survive a single day. But we cannot allow ourselves to forget for even a moment that force is effective only as a preventative — to prevent the destruction and conquest of Israel, to protect our lives and freedom. Every attempt to use force not as a preventive measure, not in self-defense, but instead as a means of smashing problems and squashing ideas, will lead to more disasters, just like the one we brought on ourselves in international waters, opposite Gaza’s shores.
woe：intense mournfulness

azure9UID: 2789030

June 1, 2010, 9:00 pm
Is Steve Jobs Big Brother?
By ROBERT WRIGHT

Steve Jobs is in the running for two trophies: comeback of the decade and villain of the year.
Last week Apple’s market capitalization surpassed Microsoft’s — something that seemed impossible 10 years ago and really impossible 14 years ago, when Jobs returned from corporate exile to resume leadership of a down-and-out Apple. And some people think Apple’s best years lie ahead; iPads are selling like — well, like iPhones.
Meanwhile, though, Jobs stands accused of what in Silicon Valley is a capital crime: authoritarian tendencies. He’s long played hardball with journalists who reveal details about forthcoming products, and now he’s deciding what content people can view on the iPhone and iPad. Apps featuring even soft-core porn are verboten, and some kinds of political commentary don’t make the cut. Apple recently rejected an app from a political cartoonist — and then, embarrassingly, had to reconsider after he won the Pulitzer Prize.
Jim Wilson/The New York Times Steve Jobs during the introduction of the iPad in January. Apple controls which applications are available on both the iPad and the iPhone.
Put these two Jobs profiles together — emerging infotech hegemon and congenital control freak — and you get a scary scenario: growing dominance of our information pipelines by a guy who likes to filter information. No wonder Jobs’s detractors have been making ironic reference to Apple’s famous 1984 Super Bowl ad, the one that implicitly cast the IBM-Microsoft alliance as Big Brother.

One tech journalist puts the fear this way: “I don’t want a single, Wal-Mart-like channel that controls access to my audience and dictates what is and is not acceptable material for me to create.” It’s not a crazy fear, given that some industry analysts think Apple wants to become “the Internet’s cable TV company” — turning its iMachines into the dominant distributors of print, video and audio.
Still, it’s an unwarranted fear. The nature of the digital landscape makes it hard to be both a control freak and a global hegemon. And Jobs’s history suggests that he’ll choose control over power.
Rewind the tape to that 1984 ad. It heralded the coming of the Macintosh operating system, which was head and shoulders above anything Microsoft was offering. So why did Microsoft wind up dominating the operating system market? Because Jobs chose not to do what Microsoft did: license his operating system to computer makers. If you wanted Apple software, you had to buy Apple hardware.
Maybe Jobs is just intent on building the perfect product.
The Microsoft approach harnessed positive feedback. The more models of Windows computers, competitively priced, the more people would buy Windows computers. And the more Windows computers people bought, the more programmers would write their software for Windows, not Apple. And the more Windows software there was, the more attractive Windows computers would be. And so on. That’s how Windows wound up with around 90 percent of the desktop operating system market.
With the iPhone, Jobs is again forgoing this positive feedback. He’s not licensing the operating system to other handset makers. There’s only one kind of iPhone — love it or leave it.
Meanwhile, Google is following a variant of the Microsoft strategy. It’s backing the Android operating system, which any handset maker is free to use. And lots of them are using it. There are more than a dozen Android models on the market, and in the first quarter of this year total sales of Android phones surpassed iPhone sales. This same logic can play out at the expense of the iPad, once lots of Android-based tablets come online.
All of this explains why some tech observers think that Apple, notwithstanding its stunning iPod-iTunes-iPhone-iPad-based comeback, is approaching its peak.
Why is Jobs choosing the same path that, last time around, kept him from conquering the world? I had puzzled over this for months until I had a conversation with tech-watcher Harry McCracken, who suggested a theory that seemed outlandish at first but is making more and more sense to me: Steve Jobs just isn’t bent on world domination.
I mean, sure, all other things being equal, he might love to rule the world. So would I. But there are things he won’t sacrifice for that goal.
One is the high profit margins you get from being the only company that sells the hardware linked to a good operating system. But I think there’s something else at work, too, and it’s kind of admirable.
If you ask Jobs why he won’t let other companies build hardware for the iPhone operating system, he’ll say something to the effect that you get a smoother product, with fewer glitches, if one company designs both the hardware and the software.
That’s true, but it was true in the computer market as well, and Jobs’s smoother products confined Apple not just to a fraction of Microsoft’s market share but to a fraction of its market capitalization; his high profit margins didn’t make up for low sales. So what’s the rationale for repeating this exercise?
Maybe there’s no rationale that makes sense in dollars and cents. Maybe Jobs is just intent on building the perfect product. Yes, he wants to make money, but, beyond a certain point, he’ll trade off money for perfection.
I say this as someone who doesn’t share his vision of perfection. I own an iPhone, but various things about it annoy me, as I note in this rant. (I may trade it in for a Palm Pre — the ultimate underdog in the cell phone wars, but a thing of beauty.)
In the various things I don’t like about Apple products, the unifying theme is the subordination of functional elegance to visual elegance. For example: The iPhone looks real sleek with that curvy metal, but it sure is easy to drop on a screen-shattering slab of sidewalk!
In general, I admit, Apple’s functional elegance is impressive. Indeed, it’s a tribute to Jobs that when the functionality falls short, it’s almost always the result of a conscious decision to favor aesthetics — whereas design flaws in Microsoft products often reflect a failure of engineers to put themselves in the shoes of users.
Maybe Jobs is basically just an artist. Maybe he wants above all to create products that are beautiful. And he succeeds, even if it costs him market share, and even if he doesn’t handle the trade-offs between functional and visual beauty as I would.
Some would say calling Jobs an artist is just a euphemistic way of calling him a control freak. And certainly an artistic temperament is a fussy temperament.
Still, being this kind of control freak is different from being the kind of control freak who wants to amass as much power as possible over information flow and then use it to stifle expression. That kind of control freak would follow the Microsoft strategy to maximize market share and thus maximize the number of machines whose apps menu he could then satanically control.
Of course, maybe Jobs isn’t an artist at heart, and maybe he isn’t deeply driven to create the perfect product. Maybe he just thinks having a small market share but high profit margins is the way to make the most money — and his finicky design aesthetic is a byproduct of this strategy.
In either event, the world is safe from him. Apple’s information pipeline won’t be the only one, and it won’t be the biggest one. Whether for temperamental or strategic reasons, Jobs is too intent on control to wind up in a position to control us

凝羽欲翔UID: 2733350

21-1

June 1, 2010, 9:00 pm Is Steve Jobs Big Brother? By ROBERT WRIGHT Steve Jobs is in the running for two trophies（战利品）: comeback（恢复，复原） of the decade and villain（坏人，恶棍） of the year. Last week Apple’s market capitalization surpassed Microsoft’s — something that seemed impossible 10 years ago and really impossible 14 years ago, when Jobs returned from corporate exile to（流放到） resume leadership of a down-and-out Apple. And some people think Apple’s best years lie ahead; iPads are selling like — well, like iPhones. Meanwhile, though, Jobs stands accused of what in Silicon Valley is a capital crime: authoritarian tendencies（独裁趋向）. He’s long played hardball with（采取强硬态度） journalists who reveal details about forthcoming products, and now he’s deciding what content people can view on the iPhone and iPad. Apps featuring even soft-core porn（色情描写） are verboten（禁止的）, and some kinds of political commentary（政客） don’t make the cut（达成）. Apple recently rejected an app from a political cartoonist — and then, embarrassingly, had to reconsider after he won the Pulitzer Prize. make the cut:达成 About three in five students make the cut. 大约5人中有三人考上（大学）。 Even the common and the outcast can make the cut to follow Jecus. 不论凡夫俗子或被唾弃者，都能跟从耶稣。 Jim Wilson/The New York Times Steve Jobs during the introduction of the iPad in January. Apple controls which applications are available on both the iPad and the iPhone. Put these two Jobs profiles together — emerging infotech（信息技术） hegemon（霸权主义者） and congenital（先天的，天生的） control freak（怪人，怪事） — and you get a scary scenario: growing dominance of our information pipelines by a guy who likes to filter information. No wonder Jobs’s detractors have been making ironic reference to Apple’s famous 1984 Super Bowl ad, the one that implicitly cast the IBM-Microsoft alliance as Big Brother. One tech journalist puts the fear this way: “I don’t want a single, Wal-Mart-like channel that controls access to my audience and dictates what is and is not acceptable material for me to create.” It’s not a crazy fear, given that some industry analysts think Apple wants to become “the Internet’s cable TV company” — turning its iMachines into the dominant distributors of print, video and audio. Still, it’s an unwarranted（无根据的） fear. The nature of the digital landscape makes it hard to be both a control freak and a global hegemon. And Jobs’s history suggests that he’ll choose control over power. Rewind the tape to that 1984 ad. It heralded（传令，通报，预兆） the coming of the Macintosh operating system, which was head and shoulders above anything Microsoft was offering. So why did Microsoft wind up（像风一样席卷） dominating the operating system market? Because Jobs chose not to do what Microsoft did: license his operating system to computer makers. If you wanted Apple software, you had to buy Apple hardware. Maybe Jobs is just intent on building the perfect product. The Microsoft approachharnessed positive feedback. The more models of Windows computers, competitively priced, the more people would buy Windows computers. And the more Windows computers people bought, the more programmers would write their software for Windows, not Apple. And the more Windows software there was, the more attractive Windows computers would be. And so on. That’s how Windows wound up with around 90 percent of the desktop operating system market. With the iPhone, Jobs is again forgoing this positive feedback（迎合上面的harness，harness是产生，这里是“跟随”）. He’s not licensing the operating system to other handset makers. There’s only one kind of iPhone — love it or leave it. Meanwhile, Google is following a variant of the Microsoft strategy（以表示不同于。。）. It’s backing the Android operating system, which any handset maker is free to use. And lots of them are using it. There are more than a dozen Android models on the market, and in the first quarter of this year total sales of Android phones surpassed iPhone sales. This same logic can play out（结束，做完） at the expense of the iPad, once lots of Android-based tablets come online. All of this explains why some tech observers think that Apple, notwithstanding its stunning iPod-iTunes-iPhone-iPad-based comeback, is approaching its peak. Why is Jobs choosing the same path that, last time around, kept him from conquering the world? I had puzzled over this for months until I had a conversation with tech-watcher Harry McCracken, who suggested a theory that seemed outlandish（奇怪的） at first but is making more and more sense to me: Steve Jobs just isn’t bent on（bent on：下决心） world domination. I mean, sure, all other things being equal, he might love to rule the world. So would I. But there are things he won’t sacrifice for that goal. One is the high profit marginsyou get from being the only company that sells the hardware linked to a good operating system. But I think there’s something else at work, too, and it’s kind of admirable. If you ask Jobs why he won’t let other companies build hardware for the iPhone operating system, he’ll say something to the effect that you get a smoother product, with fewer glitches（小故障，小失灵）, if one company designs both the hardware and the software. That’s true, but it was true in the computer market as well, and Jobs’s smoother products confined Apple not just to a fraction of Microsoft’s market share but to a fraction of its market capitalization; his high profit margins didn’t make up（补偿） for low sales. So what’s the rationale（基本原理） for repeating this exercise? Maybe there’s no rationale that makes sense in dollars and cents（money）. Maybe Jobs is just intent on（专心致志于） building the perfect product. Yes, he wants to make money, but, beyond a certain point（超过一定程度）, he’ll trade off（卖掉） money for perfection. I say this as someone who doesn’t share his vision of perfection. I own an iPhone, but various things about it annoy me, as I note in this rant. (I may trade it in for a Palm Pre — the ultimate underdog in the cell phone wars, but a thing of beauty.) In the various things I don’t like about Apple products, the unifying theme is the subordination（从属关系） of functional elegance to visual elegance. For example: The iPhone looks real sleek（光滑的，井然有序的） with that curvy metal, but it sure is easy to drop on a screen-shattering（震惊的，破碎的） slab of sidewalk! In general, I admit, Apple’s functional elegance is impressive. Indeed, it’s a tribute to Jobs that when the functionality falls short, it’s almost always the result of a conscious decision to favor aesthetics — whereas design flaws in Microsoft products often reflect a failure of engineers to put themselves in the shoes of users. put ... in the shoes of sb.换位思考 Try to put yourself in the shoes of donor. Try to see the world from the perspective of the other person, that is, try to put yourself in the shoes of others. 试着用另一个人的角度去观察世界，也就是站在别人的立场上看事情。 Maybe Jobs is basically just an artist. Maybe he wants above all to create products that are beautiful. And he succeeds, even if it costs him market share, and even if he doesn’t handle the trade-offs（权衡） between functional and visual beauty as I would（像我一样更加关注性价比）. Some would say calling Jobs an artist is just a euphemistic（委婉的） way of calling him a control freak. And certainly an artistic temperament is a fussy temperament. Still, being this kind of control freak is different from being the kind of control freak who wants to amass（积累，积聚） as much power as possible over information flow and then use it to stifle expression（遏制观点）. That kind of control freak would follow the Microsoft strategy to maximize market share and thus maximize the number of machines whose apps menu he could then satanically（魔鬼般的） control. Of course, maybe Jobs isn’t an artist at heart, and maybe he isn’t deeply driven to create the perfect product. Maybe he just thinks having a small market share but high profit margins is the way to make the most money — and his finicky（苛求的） design aesthetic is a byproduct of this strategy. In either event, the world is safe from him. Apple’s information pipeline won’t be the only one, and it won’t be the biggest one. Whether for temperamental or strategic reasons, Jobs is too intent on control to wind up in a position to control us

凝羽欲翔UID: 2733350

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（条款，法律条文） 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（悲悼） 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 as syphilis（梅毒） was in Victorian parlors（客厅）. Result: a generation of religious illiterates—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（炙手可热，烫手山芋）" 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（喷泉）." 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，用水冲淡的）" 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（民主） . . . 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 any particular religious system. . . . But we believe it is the business of public education to impel the young toward a vigorous（精力充沛的）, 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 is second to none among the books（无与争锋的） 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 classics, and devoid of（缺乏的） 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 of loyalties . . . the revival of ancient prejudices, the increase of frustrations, the eclipse of hope. . . . Religion at its best has always been an integrating force, a spiritual tonic for a soul racked by fear and cringing（谄媚） 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."

agnes2010UID: 2794922

21-1
studied by Agnes

June 1, 2010, 9:00 pm
Is Steve Jobs Big Brother?
By ROBERT WRIGHT

Steve Jobs is in the running for two trophies: comeback of the decade【十年的复原】 and villain【坏人】 of the year.

Last week Apple’s market capitalization surpassed Microsoft’s — something that seemed impossible 10 years ago and really impossible 14 years ago, when Jobs returned from corporate exile【流放】 to resume leadership of a down-and-out【被击垮的】 Apple. And some people think Apple’s best years lie ahead【向前伸展】; iPads are selling like — well, like iPhones.

Meanwhile, though, Jobs stands accused of what in Silicon Valley is a capital crime: authoritarian tendencies. He’s long played hardball with【采取强硬态度】journalists who reveal details about forthcoming products, and now he’s deciding what content people can view on the iPhone and iPad. Apps featuring even soft-core porn are verboten【禁止的】, and some kinds of political commentary【政治评论】don’t make the cut【没有减少下来】. Apple recently rejected an app from a political cartoonist — and then, embarrassingly, had to reconsider after he won the Pulitzer Priz

Jim Wilson/The New York Times Steve Jobs during the introduction of the iPad in January. Apple controls which applications are available on both the iPad and the iPhone.

Put these two Jobs profiles together — emerging infotech hegemon 【后天形成的信息技术霸主】 and congenital control freak【天生的控制怪人】 — and you get a scary scenario【一个可怕的剧情】: growing dominance of our information pipelines by a guy who likes to filter information. No wonder Jobs’s detractors【诋毁者】 have been making ironic reference to Apple’s famous 1984 Super Bowl ad, the one that implicitly cast the IBM-Microsoft alliance as Big Brother.

One tech journalist puts the fear this way: “I don’t want a single, Wal-Mart-like channel that controls access to my audience and dictates what is and is not acceptable material for me to create.” It’s not a crazy fear, given that some industry analysts think Apple wants to become “the Internet’s cable TV company” — turning its iMachines into the dominant distributors of print, video and audio.
Still, it’s an unwarranted fear【然而，这是毫无根据的恐慌】. The nature of the digital landscape makes it hard to be both a control freak and a global hegemon. And Jobs’s history suggests that he’ll choose control over power.

Rewind the tape to that 1984 ad【倒带……很形象的用法~】. It heralded【宣布】 the coming of the Macintosh operating system, which was head and shoulders above anything Microsoft was offering. So why did Microsoft wind up dominating the operating system market? Because Jobs chose not to do what Microsoft did: license his operating system to computer makers. If you wanted Apple software, you had to buy Apple hardware.

Maybe Jobs is just intent on【仅仅是一心专注于】 building the perfect product.

The Microsoft approach harnessed positive feedback. The more models of Windows computers, competitively priced, the more people would buy Windows computers. And the more Windows computers people bought, the more programmers would write their software for Windows, not Apple. And the more Windows software there was, the more attractive Windows computers would be. And so on. That’s how Windows wound up with around 90 percent of the desktop operating system market.

With the iPhone, Jobs is again forgoing this positive feedback【没有放弃，继续跟随这种积极的回馈】. He’s not licensing the operating system to other handset makers. There’s only one kind of iPhone — love it or leave it.

Meanwhile, Google is a variant of the Microsoft strategy【微软战术的一个变型】 It’s backing the Android operating system, which any handset maker is free to use. And lots of them are using it. There are more than a dozen Android models on the market, and in the first quarter of this year total sales of Android phones surpassed iPhone sales. This same logic can play out at the expense of the iPad, once lots of Android-based tablets come online.

All of this explains why some tech observers think that Apple, notwithstanding【尽管】 its stunning iPod-iTunes-iPhone-iPad-based comeback, is approaching its peak.
Why is Jobs choosing the same path that, last time around, kept him from conquering the world? I had puzzled over this for months until I had a conversation with tech-watcher Harry McCracken, who suggested a theory that seemed outlandish【古怪的，奇异的】 at first but is making more and more sense to me: Steve Jobs just isn’t bent on world domination.

I mean, sure, all other things being equal, he might love to rule the world. So would I. But there are things he won’t sacrifice for that goal.
One is the high profit margins you get from being the only company that sells the hardware linked to a good operating system. But I think there’s something else at work, too, and it’s kind of admirable.

If you ask Jobs why he won’t let other companies build hardware for the iPhone operating system, he’ll say something to the effect that you get a smoother product, with fewer glitches【小过失，差错】, if one company designs both the hardware and the software.
That’s true, but it was true in the computer market as well, and Jobs’s smoother products confined Apple not just to a fraction of Microsoft’s market share but to a fraction of its market capitalization; his high profit margins didn’t make up for low sales. So what’s the rationale【根本原因】for repeating this exercise?
Maybe there’s no rationale that makes sense in dollars and cents. Maybe Jobs is just intent on building the perfect product. Yes, he wants to make money, but, beyond a certain point, he’ll trade off【权衡 物物交换】 money for perfection.

I say this as someone who doesn’t share his vision of perfection. I own an iPhone, but various things about it annoy me, as I note in this rant. (I may trade it in for a Palm Pre — the ultimate underdog in the cell phone wars, but a thing of beauty.)
In the various things I don’t like about Apple products, the unifying theme is the subordination of functional elegance to visual elegance. For example: The iPhone looks real sleek, with that curvy metal, but it sure is easy to drop on a screen-shattering【屏幕粉碎】 slab of sidewalk!
In general, I admit, Apple’s functional elegance【功能的雅致】 is impressive. Indeed, it’s a tribute to Jobs that when the functionality falls short, it’s almost always the result of a conscious decision to favor aesthetics — whereas design flaws in Microsoft products often reflect a failure of engineers to put themselves in the shoes of users.【换位思考】

Maybe Jobs is basically just an artist. Maybe he wants above all to create products that are beautiful. And he succeeds, even if it costs him market share, and even if he doesn’t handle the trade-offs between functional and visual beauty as I would.

Some would say calling Jobs an artist is just a euphemistic【委婉的】 way of calling him a control freak. And certainly an artistic temperament【性情】 is a fussy【装饰太多 过分琐碎的】temperament.
Still, being this kind of control freak is different from being the kind of control freak who wants to amass【积累，积聚】 as much power as possible over information flow and then use it to stifle【压制】 expression. That kind of control freak would follow the Microsoft strategy to maximize market share and thus maximize the number of machines whose apps menu he could then satanically【魔鬼般的】control.

Of course, maybe Jobs isn’t an artist at heart, and maybe he isn’t deeply driven to create the perfect product. Maybe he just thinks having a small market share but high profit margins is the way to make the most money — and his finicky【过分讲究的】 design aesthetic is a byproduct of this strategy.
In either event, the world is safe from him. Apple’s information pipeline won’t be the only one, and it won’t be the biggest one. Whether for temperamental or strategic reasons, Jobs is too intent on control to wind up in a position to control us