1010G【fish】COMMENTS

agnes2010UID: 2794922

20-2
studied by Agnes

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【鞭挞】 to our own backs. For several decades now, we have been able to wield force【行使武力】 ourselves — and this power has, again and again, intoxicated【使人激动不已世人陶醉 make drunk; fill with high spirits; fill with optimism】 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【击退 遏制 cause to move back by force or influence】 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【attch oneself to a person or thing in a neurotic way把实现转移】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【中途拦截】 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【遗弃 the state of being decayed or destroyed】 and frustration【挫败失意】 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【以微弱的优势击败】 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【隐密的 不公开的】 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【bar from attention or consideration】 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【解决问题】, will lead to more disasters, just like the one we brought on ourselves in international waters, opposite Gaza’s shores.

lty900301UID: 2715509

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(something gained or given in victory or conquest especially when preserved or mounted as a memorial): comeback of the decade and villain (an uncouth person)of the year.
trophies( noun. something gained or given in victory or conquest especially when preserved or mounted as a memorial)
Last week Apple’s market capitalization(资本总额) surpassed(to become better, greater, or stronger than ) Microsoft’s — something that seemed impossible 10 years ago and really impossible 14 years ago, when Jobs returned from corporate exile(这是什么意思啊？公司流放) to resume leadership of a down-and-out Apple. And some people think Apple’s best years lie ahead（即将来临）; iPads are selling like — well, like iPhones.
surpassed(verb. to become better, greater, or stronger than )
lie ahead（即将来临）
Meanwhile, though, Jobs stands accused of what in Silicon Valley is a capital crime: authoritarian tendencies（独裁主义倾向）. He’s long played hardball（硬式棒球） with journalists who reveal details about forthcoming（=lie ahead即将来临的） 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（这是什么意思？获得晋级，获得准许。就是指，不允许放到ipad 和iphone 上）. Apple recently rejected an app from a political cartoonist — and then, embarrassingly, had to reconsider after he won the Pulitzer Prize.
forthcoming（=lie ahead即将来临的）
Make the cut 获得晋级,获得准许。Example:About three in five students make the cut.每五个考                             生中有三个考上大学。
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（情节，方案，剧本）: growing dominance of our information pipelines by a guy who likes to filter（过滤） 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.
infotech hegemon信息的王朝
congenital 天生的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（占优势的） distributors（经销商） 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（转回，倒回） the tape to that 1984 ad. 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(卷起，使紧张) 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.  这一段，可以选择背诵，很好的逻辑，把Microsoft 的成功以一个圈的形式展现。
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（结束） 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（虽然，尽管） its stunning（极好的） 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（a strikingly out of the ordinary） 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(小故障), 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（基本原理） 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（贡品，礼物） 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（=balance 权衡！） 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（难取悦的，爱挑剔的） 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

azure9UID: 2789030

Yukio Hatoyama resigns
Leaderless Japan
It used to be the envy of the world; now the hope is that things have got so bad that reform is finally possible
Jun 3rd 2010 | From The Economist print edition

SINCE 2006 Japan has had no fewer than five prime ministers. Three of them lasted just a year. The feckless Yukio Hatoyama, who stepped down on June 2nd, managed a grand total of 259 days. Particularly dispiriting about Mr Hatoyama’s sudden departure is that his election last August looked as if it marked the start of something new in Japanese politics after decades of rule by the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). His government has turned out to be as incompetent, aimless and tainted by scandal as its predecessors.
Much of the responsibility for the mess belongs with Mr Hatoyama. The man known as “the alien”, who says the sight of a little bird last weekend gave him the idea to resign, has shown breathtaking lack of leadership. Although support for his Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) has slumped in opinion polls and the government relied on minor parties, the most glaring liabilities have been over Mr Hatoyama’s own murky financial affairs and his dithering about where to put an American military base. The question for the next prime minister, to be picked in a DPJ vote on June 4th, is whether Mr Hatoyama’s failure means that Japan’s nine-month experiment with two-party democracy has been a misconceived disaster.
The answer is of interest not just within Japan. Such is the recent merry-go-round of prime ministers that it is easy to assume that whoever runs the show makes no difference to the performance of the world’s second-largest economy. Now Japan’s prominence in Asia has so clearly been eclipsed by China, its flimsy politicians are all the easier to dismiss.
But that dangerously underestimates Japan’s importance to the world and the troubles it faces. With the largest amount of debt relative to the size of its economy among the rich countries, and a stubborn deflation problem to boot, Japan has an economic time-bomb ticking beneath it. It may be able to service its debt comfortably for the time being, but the euro zone serves as a reminder that Japan needs strong leadership to stop the bomb from exploding.
What’s more, stability around South and East Asia depends to a large extent on Japan’s 50-year-old security alliance with America, which acts as a counterbalance against Chinese military expansion. The nine-month stand-off between Japan and America over a marine base in Okinawa, a fight which Mr Hatoyama picked himself and has now done for him, is a glaring example of how poor leadership can muddy the waters.
Shogun to Japan’s head
With Mr Hatoyama out of the way, it is tempting to hope that the DPJ will put its problems behind it and quickly rebuild its credibility with the electorate and Japan’s friends abroad. There are two reasons for misgivings, however. The first is the role of Ichiro Ozawa, the Svengali-like figure who stood mischievously behind Mr Hatoyama. The second is the calibre of the candidates to become Japan’s next prime minister.
Mr Ozawa resigned as the DPJ’s secretary-general alongside Mr Hatoyama, but he, unlike his boss, has not promised to bow out of politics. Moreover, he has such influence over the party that he could continue to pull strings from behind the scenes, especially ahead of upper-house elections this summer. That would be inexcusable. Like Mr Hatoyama, Mr Ozawa has been caught up in campaign-funding scandals that have reeked as badly as they ever did under the LDP. He has meddled with good policies and failed to stop bad ones, such as the attempt to roll back the privatisation of the postal system. The “Shadow Shogun” represents the worst side of the old politics. If Mr Ozawa remains influential, he will only undermine any future party leader in the eyes of voters.
Whoever that leader is will have plenty to prove as it is (see article). As The Economist went to press, the most likely replacement for Mr Hatoyama was Naoto Kan, the finance minister. He has shown more financial nous than Messrs Hatoyama and Ozawa in arguing for fiscal reform in Japan. But he has kept so quiet about the DPJ’s failing leadership that it is hard to imagine him putting Mr Ozawa in his place. Other potential candidates, who have stood up more firmly to Mr Ozawa, will be opposed by many in the party who are under the man’s sway. And sadly, none looks like he has enough of the right stuff to restore Japan’s standing in the world.
Look up, Japan
For many voters, this all smacks of Japan’s earlier attempt to escape the LDP’s shadow, in 1993. The coalition government that replaced it—also under Mr Ozawa’s spell—lasted barely 11 months. But a lot has changed since then. Today the LDP has only slightly benefited from the DPJ’s woes, and is itself in danger of splintering. The legacy of two lost decades has left voters with little nostalgia for old habits. Having finally broken the mould of Japanese politics, it is almost inconceivable that they will vote the old lot back into office.
However far-fetched it seems at this sorry juncture, Japan’s leadership crisis presents a chance to progress to a new sort of politics, based more around policies than personalities. Besides its fiscal problems, Japan has an ageing population that will be a draw on the public purse. Its stock of savings is diminishing, and though it is riddled with misgivings about the presence of American troops in Japan so long after the second world war, it can hardly pay for its own defence. Factional politics has failed utterly to deal with these problems. But divisions within the political duopoly have produced splinter parties, some of which have sensible ideas for putting Japan’s economy back on track. The new DPJ leadership, however badly it does in this summer’s upper-house elections, should capitalise on that by forming coalitions with its ideological peers, rather than with the mavericks it has relied on so far. Getting rid of Mr Ozawa would be a sign of real change.
There is hope therefore that things are beginning to get so bad that reform really will appear relatively soon. But the main impression at the moment is of drift. The sad fact is that the world’s second biggest economy, home to companies that have changed industries around the world, is being kept out of dire trouble only by the loyalty of its own savers.

azure9UID: 2789030

South Africa
When the whistle blows
South Africans can be proud about hosting the World Cup. Less so about the state of their nation
Jun 3rd 2010 | From The Economist print edition

KE NAKO! It is time! On June 11th the opening match of the football World Cup takes place at Soccer City near Soweto, a sprawling black township outside Johannesburg. For the past four years South Africa has been preparing to host the world’s greatest sporting event after the Olympics—the first African nation to do so in the tournament’s 80-year history. Sceptics said South Africa would never make it. But, billions of dollars and much heartache later, it is ready. With ten spectacular new or upgraded stadiums, as many new or revamped airports, hundreds of kilometres of expanded highways and city streets, and the continent’s first high-speed train up and running (just), South Africa is rightly proud of its achievement.
And not only in preparing for the World Cup. South Africa boasts private companies, banks, financial markets and auditing standards that are as good as any, anywhere. It is Africa’s largest economy (and the world’s 24th-biggest), accounting for 40% of sub-Saharan Africa’s total GDP. It is also by far the most sophisticated, open and democratic country in the region, with one of the most progressive constitutions anywhere. It is the only African member of the G20 and has just been nominated for a (second) two-year seat on the Security Council, the UN’s decision-making body, starting in January. The country is leader of a continent that has weathered the financial crisis surprisingly well, thanks largely to its fabulous mineral wealth. In some African countries attitudes have slowly begun to shift away from the backing of “big men” towards a more accountable sort of democracy.
Yet South Africa struggles, for all that. As our special report in this issue shows, the threats and flaws it must overcome would make even the bravest reformer quail: rampant corruption and patronage throughout the public sector; the world’s highest unemployment rate, with more than one in three out of work; one in eight of the population infected with HIV/AIDS; public hospitals described as “death traps” by their own health minister; 80% of schools deemed dysfunctional; terrible drug and alcohol abuse; crumbling infrastructure; lethal roads. Thanks to black-empowerment policies, a small new black middle class has emerged, yet more than 40% of the population still lives on less than $2 a day. Tragically, since the end of apartheid inequality in South Africa has grown.
Hospital pass
The African National Congress and its leader, South Africa’s president, Jacob Zuma, did not create this mess, but they will have to sort it out. Just 16 years ago the ANC inherited a country that was virtually bankrupt, riven with racial hostility and wracked by poverty. Although there have certainly been improvements, those living without jobs in shoddy homes in poor black townships need more. Many of the young are getting desperate. Violent protests are spreading.
More than ever the country needs strong political leadership. After one year in office, the polygamous, ever-charming Mr Zuma is doing better than many critics had feared. He has been making all the right noises on things like corruption, crime, poverty and education. But as the coming attacks from within his own faction-ridden party mount, he seems to lack vision and drive. He needs to show he can get things done. Some wonder whether he will even be able complete his five-year mandate. As the anthems draw to a close and the players take their positions to start football’s great tournament, South Africa can allow itself a moment of satisfaction. But a daunting amount of work lies ahead.

梦想在路上UID: 2812986

21-1
June 1, 2010, 9:00 pm
Is Steve Jobs Big Brother?
By ROBERT WRIGHT


Steve Jobs is in the running【有获胜希望】for two
trophies【战利品】: comeback 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【重新取得】 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 journalists who reveal details about forthcoming【即将到来，现成的】 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 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.
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【信息技术霸主】 and congenital【先天的，天生的】 control freak【怪人，怪事】 — and you get a scary【可怕的】 scenario: 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【结盟】 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【回到】 1984 ad. It heralded【传令，通报，预兆】 the coming of the Macintosh operating system, which was head and shoulders above【远远的超过】 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【保定决心要实行】 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【放弃】 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【用完，做完】 at the expense of【以损失某物的情况下】 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【古怪的】 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【放弃】 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【补偿】 low sales. So what’s the rationale【理由】 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【交换物品】 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【出售】 for a Palm Pre — the ultimate underdog【失败者】 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【部下，次要】 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【发现，选中】 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.【权衡功能和视觉比】
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 as much power as possible over information flow and then use it to stifle expression【抑制表达】. 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【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

谦行天下UID: 2797557

21-1
June 1, 2010, 9:00 pm
Is Steve Jobs Big Brother?
斯蒂芬·乔布斯（苹果电脑的首席执行员）

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.

villain： a wicked or evil person; someone who does evil deliberately
market capitalization：an estimation of the value of a business that is obtained by multiplying the number of shares outstanding by the current price of a share
down-and-out：被击垮的，穷困潦倒的
lie ahead：即将来临

Meanwhile, though, Jobs stands accused of what in Silicon Valley is a capital crime: authoritarian【独裁主义】 tendencies. He’s long played hardball【采取强硬态度】 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【forbidden】, 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.
//Jobs forbid people from revealing details of forthcoming products.

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[critics] 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.
infotech：信息技术
hegemon：有至高无上权力的霸权主义者(或国家等)
congenital：present at birth but not necessarily hereditary; acquired during fetal development
control freak ：喜欢控制一切的人；对控制上瘾者

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.
dictate say out loud for the purpose of recording

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[远远超出] 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[紧张的，兴奋的] with around 90 percent of the desktop operating system market.

With the iPhone, Jobs is again forgoing[放弃] 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[尽管] its stunning iPod-iTune
s-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.
outlandish:conspicuously or grossly unconventional or unusual
be bent on：下决心fixed in your purpose
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.
glitch:
a fault or defect in a system or machine

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?
to a fraction:完全的
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.
trade off：
an exchange that occurs as a compromise


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.)

underdog ：one at a disadvantage and expected to lose

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!
shattering：破碎的
slab ：厚板
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.
put ...in the shoes of换位思考
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.
stifle ：impair the respiration of or obstruct the air passage of
satanically ：恶魔般的
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【副产品】 of this strategy.
finicky ：exacting especially about details
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

lty900301UID: 2715509

Comment 22-1
Yukio Hatoyama resigns
Leaderless Japan
It used to be the envy of the world; now the hope is that things have got so bad that reform is finally possible
Jun 3rd 2010 | From The Economist print edition
SINCE 2006 Japan has had no fewer than five prime ministers. Three of them lasted just a year. The feckless(weak, ineffective/worthless, irresponsible) Yukio Hatoyama, who stepped down(让位，任期届满) on June 2nd, managed a grand total of 259 days（这里的grand用的非常漂亮，写出了十足的讽刺意味）. Particularly dispiriting(to deprive of morale or enthusiasm) about Mr Hatoyama’s sudden departure is that his election last August looked as if it marked the start of something new in Japanese politics after decades of rule by the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). His government has turned out to be as incompetent, aimless and tainted(腐坏，腐败) by scandal as its predecessors.
Much of the responsibility for the mess belongs with Mr Hatoyama. The man known as “the alien”, who says the sight of a little bird last weekend gave him the idea to resign, has shown breathtaking lack of leadership. Although support for his Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) has slumped in opinion polls and the government relied on minor parties, the most glaring liabilities have been over Mr Hatoyama’s own murky（黑暗的，阴郁的） financial affairs and his dithering(慌乱，颤抖，紧张) about where to put an American military base. The question for the next prime minister, to be picked in a DPJ vote on June 4th, is whether Mr Hatoyama’s failure means that Japan’s nine-month experiment with two-party democracy has been a misconceived disaster.
The answer is of interest not just within Japan. Such is the recent merry-go-round of prime ministers that it is easy to assume that whoever runs the show makes no difference to the performance of the world’s second-largest economy. Now Japan’s prominence in Asia has so clearly been eclipsed by China, its flimsy(脆弱的，易坏的) politicians are all the easier to dismiss.
But that dangerously underestimates Japan’s importance to the world and the troubles it faces. With the largest amount of debt relative to the size of its economy among the rich countries, and a stubborn deflation problem to boot, Japan has an economic time-bomb ticking beneath it. It may be able to service its debt comfortably for the time being, but the euro zone serves as a reminder that Japan needs strong leadership to stop the bomb from exploding.(Leaderless Japan 这个没有领导的例子可以用在作文Issue_48中)
What’s more, stability(稳定性，安定) around South and East Asia depends to a large extent on Japan’s 50-year-old security alliance with America, which acts as a counterbalance against Chinese military expansion. The nine-month stand-off between Japan and America over a marine base in Okinawa, a fight which Mr Hatoyama picked himself and has now done for him, is a glaring example of how poor leadership can muddy(使污浊) the waters.
Shogun to Japan’s head
With Mr Hatoyama out of the way, it is tempting（诱惑人的，吸引人的） to hope that the DPJ will put its problems behind it and quickly rebuild its credibility with the electorate（选民） and Japan’s friends abroad. There are two reasons for misgivings（担忧，疑虑，不安）, however. The first is the role of Ichiro Ozawa, the Svengali-like figure who stood mischievously（有害地，淘气地） behind Mr Hatoyama. The second is the calibre of the candidates to become Japan’s next prime minister.
Mr Ozawa resigned as the DPJ’s secretary-general alongside Mr Hatoyama, but he, unlike his boss, has not promised to bow out of（退出，取消） politics. Moreover, he has such influence over the party that he could continue to pull strings from behind the scenes, especially ahead of upper-house elections this summer. That would be inexcusable（无法辩解的，不可宽赦的）. Like Mr Hatoyama, Mr Ozawa has been caught up in campaign-funding scandals that have reeked as badly as they ever did under the LDP. He has meddled with good policies and failed to stop bad ones, such as the attempt to roll back the privatisation of the postal system. The “Shadow Shogun” represents the worst side of the old politics. If Mr Ozawa remains influential, he will only undermine any future party leader in the eyes of voters.
Whoever that leader is will have plenty to prove as it is (see article). As The Economist went to press, the most likely replacement for Mr Hatoyama was Naoto Kan, the finance minister. He has shown more financial nous（常识） than Messrs Hatoyama and Ozawa in arguing for fiscal reform in Japan. But he has kept so quiet about the DPJ’s failing leadership that it is hard to imagine him putting Mr Ozawa in his place. Other potential candidates, who have stood up more firmly to Mr Ozawa, will be opposed by many in the party who are under the man’s sway. And sadly, none looks like he has enough of the right stuff to restore Japan’s standing in the world.
Look up, Japan
For many voters, this all smacks of Japan’s earlier attempt to escape the LDP’s shadow, in 1993. The coalition（合并，联合） government that replaced it—also under Mr Ozawa’s spell—lasted barely 11 months. But a lot has changed since then. Today the LDP has only slightly benefited from the DPJ’s woes（悲痛）, and is itself in danger of splintering. The legacy of two lost decades has left voters with little nostalgia（乡愁，怀旧之情） for old habits. Having finally broken the mould of Japanese politics, it is almost inconceivable（不能想象的，难以置信的） that they will vote the old lot back into office.
However far-fetched it seems at this sorry juncture, Japan’s leadership crisis presents a chance to progress to a new sort of politics, based more around policies than personalities. Besides its fiscal problems, Japan has an ageing population that will be a draw on the public purse. Its stock of savings is diminishing, and though it is riddled with misgivings about the presence of American troops in Japan so long after the second world war, it can hardly pay for its own defence. Factional politics has failed utterly to deal with these problems. But divisions within the political duopoly（双头垄断市场） have produced splinter（使分裂） parties, some of which have sensible ideas for putting Japan’s economy back on track. The new DPJ leadership, however badly it does in this summer’s upper-house elections, should capitalise on that by forming coalitions with its ideological peers, rather than with the mavericks it has relied on so far. Getting rid of Mr Ozawa would be a sign of real change.
There is hope therefore that things are beginning to get so bad that reform really will appear relatively soon. But the main impression at the moment is of drift. The sad fact is that the world’s second biggest economy, home to companies that have changed industries around the world, is being kept out of dire trouble only by the loyalty of its own savers.

lty900301UID: 2715509

Comment 22-2
South Africa
When the whistle blows
South Africans can be proud about hosting the World Cup. Less so about the state of their nation
Jun 3rd 2010 | From The Economist print edition
KE NAKO! It is time! On June 11th the opening match of the football World Cup takes place at Soccer City near Soweto, a sprawling black township outside Johannesburg. For the past four years South Africa has been preparing to host the world’s greatest sporting event after the Olympics—the first African nation to do so in the tournament’s 80-year history. Sceptics said South Africa would never make it. But, billions of dollars and much heartache (心痛)later, it is ready. With ten spectacular（奇观，壮观） new or upgraded stadiums, as many new or revamped（改造，修补） airports, hundreds of kilometres of expanded highways and city streets, and the continent’s first high-speed train up and running (just), South Africa is rightly proud of its achievement.
And not only in preparing for the World Cup. South Africa boasts private companies, banks, financial markets and auditing（审核的） standards that are as good as any, anywhere. It is Africa’s largest economy (and the world’s 24th-biggest), accounting for 40% of sub-Saharan Africa’s total GDP. It is also by far the most sophisticated（久经世故的）, open and democratic country in the region, with one of the most progressive constitutions anywhere. It is the only African member of the G20 and has just been nominated for a (second) two-year seat on the Security Council, the UN’s decision-making body, starting in January. The country is leader of a continent that has weathered the financial crisis surprisingly well, thanks largely to its fabulous mineral wealth. In some African countries attitudes have slowly begun to shift away from the backing of “big men” towards a more accountable sort of democracy.
Yet South Africa struggles, for all that. As our special report in this issue shows, the threats and flaws it must overcome（可以用在argument中） would make even the bravest reformer quail（）: rampant corruption and patronage throughout the public sector; the world’s highest unemployment rate, with more than one in three out of work; one in eight of the population infected with HIV/AIDS; public hospitals described as “death traps” by their own health minister; 80% of schools deemed（认为，持某种看法） dysfunctional（不正常的）; terrible drug and alcohol abuse; crumbling infrastructure（下部构造，下部组织）; lethal roads. Thanks to black-empowerment policies（什么意思?）, a small new black middle class has emerged, yet more than 40% of the population still lives on less than $2 a day. Tragically, since the end of apartheid inequality in South Africa has grown.
Hospital pass
The African National Congress and its leader, South Africa’s president, Jacob Zuma, did not create this mess, but they will have to sort it out. Just 16 years ago the ANC inherited a country that was virtually bankrupt, riven with racial hostility and wracked by poverty. Although there have certainly been improvements, those living without jobs in shoddy homes in poor black townships need more. Many of the young are getting desperate. Violent protests are spreading.
More than ever the country needs strong political leadership. After one year in office, the polygamous（一夫多妻制）, ever-charming Mr Zuma is doing better than many critics had feared. He has been making all the right noises on things like corruption, crime, poverty and education. But as the coming attacks from within his own faction-ridden party mount, he seems to lack vision and drive. He needs to show he can get things done. Some wonder whether he will even be able complete his five-year mandate（委任统治）. As the anthems draw to a close and the players take their positions to start football’s great tournament, South Africa can allow itself a moment of satisfaction. But a daunting amount of work lies ahead.
这篇文章从世界杯，写到了南非当前国内局势。以及现状，由点及面。这种写作手法值得学习！！

azure9UID: 2789030

South Africa
When the whistle blows
South Africans can be proud about hosting the World Cup. Less so about the state of their nation
Jun 3rd 2010 | From The Economist print edition

KE NAKO! It is time! On June 11th the opening match of the football World Cup takes place at Soccer City near Soweto, a sprawling black township outside Johannesburg. For the past four years South Africa has been preparing to host the world’s greatest sporting event after the Olympics—the first African nation to do so in the tournament’s 80-year history. Sceptics said South Africa would never make it. But, billions of dollars and much heartache later, it is ready. With ten spectacular new or upgraded stadiums, as many new or revamped airports, hundreds of kilometres of expanded highways and city streets, and the continent’s first high-speed train up and running (just), South Africa is rightly proud of its achievement.

sprawling: Spreading out in different directions
               Spreading out carelessly (as if wandering) in different directions
               Spread out irregularly; "sat sprawled in the big armchair"; "the sprawling suburbs"; "a big sprawly city
sceptic:  Someone who habitually doubts accepted beliefs(懷疑論者)
revamp: To patch up or renovate; repair or restore


And not only in preparing for the World Cup. South Africa boasts private companies, banks, financial markets and auditing standards that are as good as any, anywhere. It is Africa’s largest economy (and the world’s 24th-biggest), accounting for 40% of sub-Saharan Africa’s total GDP. It is also by far the most sophisticated, open and democratic country in the region, with one of the most progressive constitutions anywhere. It is the only African member of the G20 and has just been nominated for a (second) two-year seat on the Security Council, the UN’s decision-making body, starting in January. The country is leader of a continent that has weathered the financial crisis surprisingly well, thanks largely to its fabulous mineral wealth. In some African countries attitudes have slowly begun to shift away from the backing of “big men” towards a more accountable sort of democracy.

progressive:  Favoring or promoting progress
                   Favoring or promoting reform
                   Moving forward; proceeding onward; advancing; evincing progress; increasing; as, progressive motion or course                  
weather: Face and withstand with courage
              Face or endure with courage

Yet South Africa struggles, for all that. As our special report in this issue shows, the threats and flaws it must overcome would make even the bravest reformer quail: rampant corruption(貪污，腐敗) and patronage throughout the public sector; the world’s highest unemployment rate, with more than one in three out of work; one in eight of the population infected with HIV/AIDS; public hospitals described as “death traps” by their own health minister; 80% of schools deemed dysfunctional; terrible drug and alcohol abuse; crumbling infrastructure; lethal roads. Thanks to black-empowerment policies, a small new black middle class has emerged, yet more than 40% of the population still lives on less than $2 a day. Tragically, since the end of apartheid inequality in South Africa has grown.

rampant: Unrestrained and violent
patronage: The act of providing approval and support
apartheid: A social policy or racial segregation involving political and economic and legal discrimination against people who are not Whites; the former official policy in South Africa

Hospital pass
The African National Congress and its leader, South Africa’s president, Jacob Zuma, did not create this mess, but they will have to sort it out. Just 16 years ago the ANC inherited a country that was virtually bankrupt, riven with racial hostility and wracked by poverty. Although there have certainly been improvements, those living without jobs in shoddy homes in poor black townships need more. Many of the young are getting desperate. Violent protests are spreading.

sort out: Punish in order to gain control or enforce obedience
              Make free from confusion or ambiguity; make clear

More than ever the country needs strong political leadership. After one year in office, the polygamous(一夫多妻制), ever-charming Mr Zuma is doing better than many critics had feared. He has been making all the right noises on things like corruption, crime, poverty and education. But as the coming attacks from within his own faction-ridden party mount, he seems to lack vision and drive. He needs to show he can get things done. Some wonder whether he will even be able complete his five-year mandate. As the anthems draw to a close and the players take their positions to start football’s great tournament, South Africa can allow itself a moment of satisfaction. But a daunting amount of work lies ahead.

daunting: Discouraging through fear

我已經荒廢了很久了...

凝羽欲翔UID: 2733350

22-1

Yukio Hatoyama resigns Leaderless Japan It used to be the envy of the world; now the hope is that things have got so bad that reform is finally possible Jun 3rd 2010 | From The Economist print edition SINCE 2006 Japan has had no fewer than five prime ministers. Three of them lasted just a year. The feckless（无效的，不负责的） Yukio Hatoyama, who stepped down on June 2nd, managed a grand total of 259 days. Particularly dispiriting（使人气馁的） about Mr Hatoyama’s sudden departure is that his election last August looked as if it marked the start of something new in Japanese politics after decades of rule by the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). His government has turned out to be as incompetent, aimless and tainted by scandal as its predecessors. Much of the responsibility for the mess belongs with Mr Hatoyama. The man known as “the alien”, who says the sight of a little bird last weekend gave him the idea to resign, has shown breathtaking（惊人的，惊动的） lack of leadership. Although support for his Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) has slumped in opinion polls and the government relied on minor parties, the most glaring（耀眼的） liabilities have been over Mr Hatoyama’s own murky financial affairs and his dithering（抖动的） about where to put an American military base. The question for the next prime minister, to be picked in a DPJ vote on June 4th, is whether Mr Hatoyama’s failure means that Japan’s nine-month experiment with two-party democracy has been a misconceived disaster. The answer is of interest not just within Japan. Such is the recent merry-go-round（旋转木马，这里以为频繁换届） of prime ministers that it is easy to assume that whoever runs the show makes no difference to the performance of the world’s second-largest economy. Now Japan’s prominence in Asia has so clearly been eclipsed by China（pay attention to 'eclipse'）, its flimsy(浅薄的，不周密的) politicians are all the easier to dismiss（离开，解雇）. dismiss：离开，解雇 He dismisses the story as mere rumor.他认为那种传闻纯属谣言而不予考虑。 When to dismiss an imcompetent subodinate? 什么时候要解雇不称职的雇员？ But that dangerously underestimates Japan’s importance to the world and the troubles it faces. With the largest amount of debt relative to the size of its economy among the rich countries, and a stubborn deflation problem to boot, Japan has an economic time-bomb ticking（时时刻刻都会爆炸的） beneath it. It may be able to service its debt comfortably for the time being, but the euro zone serves as a reminder（take the place of 'remind sb of sth'） that Japan needs strong leadership to stop the bomb from exploding. What’s more, stability around South and East Asia depends to a large extent on Japan’s 50-year-old security alliance with America, which acts as a counterbalance（抗衡） against Chinese military expansion. The nine-month stand-off（冷淡） between Japan and America over a marine base in Okinawa, a fight which Mr Hatoyama picked himself and has now done for him, is a glaring example of how poor leadership can muddy the waters. Shogun to Japan’s head With Mr Hatoyama out of the way, it is tempting to hope that the DPJ will put its problems behind it and quickly rebuild its credibility with（恢复信用） the electorate and Japan’s friends abroad. There are two reasons for misgivings, however. The first is the role of Ichiro Ozawa, the Svengali-like figure who stood mischievously（淘气的，有害的） behind Mr Hatoyama. The second is the calibre of the candidates to become Japan’s next prime minister（pay attention to the word 'calibre'）. Mr Ozawa resigned as the DPJ’s secretary-general alongside Mr Hatoyama, but he, unlike his boss, has not promised to bow out（退出，辞职） of politics. Moreover, he has such influence over the party that he could continue to pull strings from behind the scenes（暗中操作）, especially ahead of upper-house elections this summer. That would be inexcusable（无法辩解的，不可饶恕的）. Like Mr Hatoyama, Mr Ozawa has been caught up in campaign-funding scandals that have reeked（冒烟的） as badly as they ever did under the LDP. He has meddled with（瞎弄，乱动） good policies and failed to stop bad ones, such as the attempt to roll back（击退，把。。打回） the privatisation of the postal system. The “Shadow Shogun” represents the worst side of the old politics. If Mr Ozawa remains influential, he will only undermine any future party leader in the eyes of voters. bow out:退出，辞职 Can you bow out when they are shouting your name？当他们呼喊你的名字的时候你能舍得退出舞台吗？ The queen mother, Ms. Cixi, didn't bow out of power. 慈禧太后不舍得退出权力圈。 Whoever that leader is will have plenty to prove as it is (see article). As The Economist went to press, the most likely replacement for Mr Hatoyama was Naoto Kan, the finance minister. He has shown more financial nous（精神，常识） than Messrs Hatoyama and Ozawa in arguing for fiscal reform in Japan. But he has kept so quiet about the DPJ’s failing leadership that it is hard to imagine him putting Mr Ozawa in his place. Other potential candidates, who have stood up more firmly to Mr Ozawa, will be opposed by many in the party who are under the man’s sway（动摇，影响）. And sadly, none looks like he has enough of the right stuff to restore Japan’s standing in the world. nous：精神，常识 The contradiction of enthusiasm and nous run through the writing of hisotrical novelist. 摘要历史小说家的创作始终贯穿着激情和理性的矛盾. But the real strenth of the alliance is that Mr. AnWar's charisma and political nous holds it together. 但是联盟的真正力量，还在于安瓦尔利用非凡魄力和政治知性，让大家团结一致。 Look up, Japan For many voters, this all smacks（滋味，风味） of Japan’s earlier attempt to escape the LDP’s shadow, in 1993. The coalition（联合） government that replaced it—also under Mr Ozawa’s spell（被迷住）—lasted barely 11 months. But a lot has changed since then. Today the LDP has only slightly benefited from the DPJ’s woes（悲伤，悲痛）, and is itself in danger of splintering. The legacy of two lost decades has left voters with little nostalgia（怀恋） for old habits. Having finally broken the mould（发霉的） of Japanese politics, it is almost inconceivable that they will vote the old lot back into office. However far-fetched it seems at this sorry juncture, Japan’s leadership crisis presents a chance to progress to a new sort of politics, based more around policies than personalities. Besides its fiscal problems, Japan has an ageing population that will be a draw on the public purse（draw on：带上，利用，占用）. Its stock of savings is diminishing, and though it is riddled with（在。。上打了很多洞） misgivings about the presence of American troops in Japan so long after the second world war, it can hardly pay for its own defence. Factional politics has failed utterly to deal with these problems. But divisions within the political duopoly（双头垄断市场） have produced splinter parties, some of which have sensible ideas for putting Japan’s economy back on track. The new DPJ leadership, however badly it does in this summer’s upper-house elections, should capitalise on that by forming coalitions with its ideological peers, rather than with the mavericks（没打烙印的动物，持有不同意见的人） it has relied on so far. Getting rid of Mr Ozawa would be a sign of real change. There is hope therefore that things are beginning to get so bad that reform really will appear relatively soon. But the main impression at the moment is of drift. The sad fact is that the world’s second biggest economy, home to companies that have changed industries around the world, is being kept out of dire trouble only by the loyalty of its own savers.

凝羽欲翔UID: 2733350

22-2

South Africa When the whistle blows South Africans can be proud about hosting the World Cup. Less so about the state of their nation Jun 3rd 2010 | From The Economist print edition KE NAKO! It is time! On June 11th the opening match of the football World Cup takes place at Soccer City near Soweto, a sprawling black township outside Johannesburg. For the past four years South Africa has been preparing to host the world’s greatest sporting event after the Olympics—the first African nation to do so in the tournament’s 80-year history. Sceptics said South Africa would never make it. But, billions of dollars and much heartache later, it is ready. With ten spectacular new or upgraded stadiums, as many new or revamped（修改，整改） airports, hundreds of kilometres of expanded highways and city streets, and the continent’s first high-speed train up and running (just), South Africa is rightly proud of its achievement. And not only in preparing for the World Cup. South Africa boasts private companies, banks, financial markets and auditing standards that are as good as any, anywhere. It is Africa’s largest economy (and the world’s 24th-biggest), accounting for 40% of sub-Saharan Africa’s total GDP. It is also by far the most sophisticated, open and democratic country in the region, with one of the most progressive constitutions anywhere. It is the only African member of the G20 and has just been nominated for a (second) two-year seat on the Security Council, the UN’s decision-making body, starting in January. The country is leader of a continent that has weathered the financial crisis surprisingly well, thanks largely to its fabulous mineral wealth. In some African countries attitudes have slowly begun to shift away（迁移） from the backing of “big men”（大男人主义？） towards a more accountable sort of democracy. Yet South Africa struggles, for all that. As our special report in this issue shows, the threats and flaws it must overcome would make even the bravest reformer quail（恐惧）: rampant（猖獗的） corruption and patronage throughout the public sector; the world’s highest unemployment rate, with more than one in three out of work; one in eight of the population infected with HIV/AIDS; public hospitals described as “death traps” by their own health minister; 80% of schools deemed dysfunctional（功能紊乱的）; terrible drug and alcohol abuse; crumbling（破碎的） infrastructure; lethal（致命的） roads. Thanks to black-empowerment policies, a small new black middle class has emerged, yet more than 40% of the population still lives on less than $2 a day. Tragically, since the end of apartheid inequality in South Africa has grown. Hospital pass The African National Congress and its leader, South Africa’s president, Jacob Zuma, did not create this mess, but they will have to sort it out. Just 16 years ago the ANC inherited a country that was virtually bankrupt, riven with racial hostility and wracked by poverty. Although there have certainly been improvements, those living without jobs in shoddy homes in poor black townships need more. Many of the young are getting desperate. Violent protests are spreading. sort out:理清，分开 I need to sort out my problem first.  我必须先解决我自己的问题。 More than ever the country needs strong political leadership. After one year in office, the polygamous（一夫多妻制的）, ever-charming Mr Zuma is doing better than many critics had feared. He has been making all the right noises on things like corruption, crime, poverty and education. But as the coming attacks from within his own faction-ridden party mount, he seems to lack vision and drive. He needs to show he can get things done. Some wonder whether he will even be able complete his five-year mandate. As the anthems（赞美诗） draw to a close and the players take their positions to start football’s great tournament, South Africa can allow itself a moment of satisfaction. But a daunting（使人畏缩的，恐惧的，取代large amount of） amount of work lies ahead.

azure9UID: 2789030

A special report on South Africa
The price of freedom
Since embracing full democracy 16 years ago, South Africa has made huge strides. But, says Diana Geddes (interviewed here), not everything has changed for the better
Jun 3rd 2010 | From The Economist print edition

SPORT matters in South Africa. In his new year’s address to the nation, President Jacob Zuma described 2010 as “the most important year in our country since 1994”. To outsiders, playing host to this year’s football World Cup seemed perhaps a less momentous event than holding the country’s first fully democratic elections that established a black-majority government 16 years ago—especially when the national team, Bafana Bafana, may be knocked out in the first round. But with the kick-off on June 11th, just days after the country’s 100th birthday on May 31st, the world’s eyes will be on Africa’s leading economy for the next few weeks.

Can the “miracle” nation, which won plaudits around the world for its peaceful transition to democracy after centuries of white-supremacist rule, conquer the bitter divisions of its past to turn itself into the “rainbow nation” of Nelson Mandela’s dreams? Or will it become ever more mired in bad governance, racial tension, poverty, corruption, violence and decay to turn into yet another African failed state? With Zimbabwe, its neighbour to the north, an ever-present reminder of what can happen after just a couple of decades of post-liberation single-party rule, many South Africans, black and white, worry that their country may be reaching a tipping point.

Western fans arriving in South Africa for the World Cup could be forgiven for thinking that they were still in the rich world. Much of the infrastructure is as good as you will find anywhere—particularly those parts that have been given multi-million-dollar facelifts in preparation for the tournament. Ten spectacular stadiums have been newly built or upgraded at a cost of 15 billion rand (see box for currency conversions). Visitors arriving at O.R. Tambo, the main international airport, will be whisked into Johannesburg by the Gautrain, Africa’s first high-speed rail link (pictured above). And many of the country’s hotels and restaurants are world-class, including Bushmans Kloof hotel, three hours’ drive from Cape Town, recently voted the world’s best by Travel + Leisure website, and Cape Town’s La Colombe, ranked 12th in this year’s S.Pellegrino list of the best restaurants.

Not as rich as it looks
But in reality South Africa is no more than a middle-income developing country with a GDP per person of around $10,000 (at purchasing-power parity), a quarter of the American figure. On a per-head basis, it is the seventh-richest country in Africa by some measures. The average hides huge disparities. Under apartheid, whites were encouraged to believe they were part of the Western world. It was only when they had to start sharing their streets, goods and services with their darker-skinned compatriots that they began to wonder whether they really were. Many now complain about falling standards. Yet most whites have done rather well since apartheid ended—better, in fact, than most blacks. They still enjoy a good life, helped by cheap domestic help and first-class private medical care and schools.

For the majority of South Africa’s blacks, however, the living is not so easy. Although many of the poorest now get some kind of government support, it is only a pittance. Most blacks still live in shoddy shacks or bungalows without proper sanitation in poor crime-ridden townships outside the main cities. Their schools and hospitals are often in a dire state. And, in a country where there is little public transport, most blacks do not own a car. Although it has the world’s 24th-biggest economy, South Africa ranks a dismal 129th out of 182 on the UN’s Human Development Index (and 12th in Africa).

The country’s constitution, adopted in 1996, is one of the most progressive in the world. It enshrines a wide range of social and economic rights as well as the more usual civil and political freedoms. Discrimination is banned not only on the grounds of race, gender, age and belief, but also of pregnancy, marital status, sexual orientation and culture. Every one of the country’s 49m people—79% black, 9% white, 9% coloured (mixed race) and 3% Asian/Indian—is guaranteed equal protection under the law. Freedom House, a Washington-based research foundation, gives South Africa a respectable rating of 2 in its “freedom in the world” index, where 1 is completely free and 7 totally unfree.

South Africa is a land of contrasts. It has fabulous mineral wealth, with 90% of the world’s known platinum reserves, 80% of its manganese, 70% of its chrome and 40% of its gold, as well as rich coal deposits; yet 43% of its population live on less than $2 a day. It has just announced plans to develop a satellite programme (with India and Brazil) and is the leading candidate to host the world’s biggest science project, the Square Kilometre Array radio telescope; yet in international maths, science and reading tests it performs abysmally. It has sky-high unemployment yet at the same time suffers from crippling skills shortages. It was the first country to perform a heart transplant, and some of its doctors are still among the best anywhere; yet its people’s health record is among the world’s worst. And, leaving aside war zones, it is one of the most violent and crime-ridden countries on the planet. This special report will look at South Africa the way that most of its people see it. The results are often harsh.

The bright side
Yet there are some encouraging signs that the contrasts are getting less stark. South Africa has recently cut its murder rate in half; virtually eradicated severe malnutrition among the under-fives; increased the enrolment in schools of children aged seven to 15 to nearly 100%; provided welfare benefits for 15m people; and set up the world’s biggest antiretroviral treatment programme for HIV/AIDS.

What about race? South Africa remains obsessed by it. That is hardly surprising after 350 years of racial polarisation, including nearly half a century of apartheid, when inter-racial sex was a criminal offence and non-whites were even banned from using the pavements. The subject waxes and wanes. Only last August Mr Zuma was warning his compatriots against reviving the race debate. But the murder in April of Eugene Terre’Blanche, leader of a white-supremacist group, and the racist outbursts by Julius Malema, the leader of the powerful Youth League of the ruling African National Congress (ANC), have brought it to the fore again.

azure9UID: 2789030

The future of the tablet computer
Not written in stone
The iPad is a success, but other tablets may not be
Jun 3rd 2010 | From The Economist print edition

THE iPad, Apple’s latest gadget, seems to have lived up to its maker’s lofty expectations: 2m of them have been sold in two months, with more presumably to follow after the device’s debut outside America on May 28th. But will the iPad’s success trigger explosive growth for other sorts of “tablet” computers, a category that had previously been seen a sideshow, much as the iPhone did for smart-phones?

The answer appears to be yes, if the proliferation of tablets at Computex, a trade show held this week in Taiwan, is anything to judge by. The exhibition floor was teeming with prototypes, especially from Taiwanese firms such as Acer and Asustek. Dell, an American rival, had unveiled its offering, Streak, a few days earlier. Even Google and One Laptop per Child, a charity, have tablets in the works.

Yet the flurry of activity is deceptive. Not all the computer-makers rushing to produce tablets are convinced they will be a huge success; they are simply hedging their bets after their failure, in many cases, to predict the popularity of netbooks (no-frills laptops), which shot to success in 2008. Tellingly, most of the new devices will not hit the stores before the end of the year, if not later.

It is still unclear what people will use tablets for, says Jeff Orr of ABI Research. They are unlikely to edge out established devices such as televisions, personal computers, games consoles and smart-phones. Most buyers so far have been habitual early-adopters of new gadgets. But tablets may find a niche, he believes, as portable video players and magazine racks.

Much will depend on price. The cheapest iPad costs $499. For tablets to become a mass-market product like DVD players, analysts reckon, the price must fall to $100 at most. Some iPad clones are to be sold at this level, but they lack many of its most attractive features. Fancier tablets could become cheaper, however, if mobile-telecoms operators were to subsidise them, as they do with handsets.

This points to another barrier. To maximise their usefulness, tablets need a fast wireless-internet connection. But so far only a third of American households have Wi-Fi, reckons ABI Research. And mobile-data services are not getting cheaper, at least for heavy users. On June 2nd AT&T ditched its all-you-can-eat plan for iPads, which cost $30 a month, and replaced it with tiered rates.

What is more, tablets are less about hardware than about the software and services that run on them. Users of iPads can already download more than 5,000 applications from Apple’s online store. Such variety is a distant prospect for owners of tablets powered by other operating systems, such as Google’s Android. Yet the more competition there is among operating systems and devices, the more common tablets are likely to become.
Some of the most muscular players in the industry are still in the locker room. Hewlett-Packard is said to have killed the Slate, which was to be based on Microsoft’s Windows, and is now reportedly working on a tablet using an operating system from Palm, the smart-phone maker that HP recently bought. Microsoft will certainly re-enter the fray, although none of its operating systems seems a good fit for tablets. Nokia, too, has yet to unveil its plans.

ABI Research thinks only 8m will be sold worldwide this year and that they will not become a mass-market device before the middle of the decade, by which time it foresees annual sales of 57m. Even this would be less than the number of netbooks expected to be sold this year. And it is not even a third of the global market for smart-phones in 2009.
But tablets may still have a big impact, argues Carolina Milanesi of Gartner, another research firm. Television-makers, for instance, may introduce more interactive features and computer-makers launch app stores in response. All very gratifying for tablet manufacturers, no doubt, but not exactly a money-spinner

lty900301UID: 2715509

The future of the tablet computer
Not written in stone
The iPad is a success, but other tablets may not be
Jun 3rd 2010 | From The Economist print edition
THE iPad, Apple’s latest gadget, seems to have lived up to its maker’s lofty（高的，傲慢的，高超的） expectations: 2m of them have been sold in two months, with more presumably to follow after the device’s debut outside America on May 28th. But will the iPad’s success trigger explosive growth for other sorts of “tablet” computers, a category that had previously been seen a sideshow, much as the iPhone did for smart-phones?
The answer appears to be yes, if the proliferation（增殖，扩散，激增） of tablets at Computex, a trade show held this week in Taiwan, is anything to judge by. The exhibition floor was teeming with prototypes, especially from Taiwanese firms such as Acer and Asustek. Dell, an American rival, had unveiled its offering, Streak, a few days earlier. Even Google and One Laptop per Child, a charity, have tablets in the works.
Yet the flurry（疾风，慌张） of activity is deceptive(tending or having power to deceive). Not all the computer-makers rushing to produce tablets are convinced they will be a huge success; they are simply hedging their bets after their failure, in many cases, to predict the popularity of netbooks (no-frills laptops), which shot to success in 2008. Tellingly(carrying great weight and producing a marked effect), most of the new devices will not hit the stores before the end of the year, if not later.
It is still unclear what people will use tablets for, says Jeff Orr of ABI Research. They are unlikely to edge out(替代) established devices such as televisions, personal computers, games consoles and smart-phones. Most buyers so far have been habitual early-adopters of new gadgets. But tablets may find a niche（壁橱，对应于后面的rack）, he believes, as portable video players and magazine racks.
Much will depend on price. The cheapest iPad costs $499. For tablets to become a mass-market product like DVD players, analysts reckon, the price must fall to $100 at most. Some iPad clones are to be sold at this level, but they lack many of its most attractive features. Fancier tablets could become cheaper, however, if mobile-telecoms operators were to subsidise(补贴，资助) them, as they do with handsets.
This points to another barrier. To maximise their usefulness, tablets need a fast wireless-internet connection. But so far only a third of American households have Wi-Fi, reckons ABI Research. And mobile-data services are not getting cheaper, at least for heavy users. On June 2nd AT&T ditched its all-you-can-eat plan for iPads, which cost $30 a month, and replaced it with tiered(having or arranged in tiers, rows or layers-often used in combination) rates.
What is more, tablets are less about hardware than about the software and services that run on them. Users of iPads can already download more than 5,000 applications from Apple’s online store. Such variety is a distant prospect for owners of tablets powered by other operating systems, such as Google’s Android. Yet the more competition there is among operating systems and devices, the more common tablets are likely to become.
Some of the most muscular players in the industry are still in the locker room. Hewlett-Packard is said to have killed the Slate, which was to be based on Microsoft’s Windows, and is now reportedly working on a tablet using an operating system from Palm, the smart-phone maker that HP recently bought.(最近惠普把胖梨收购了？) Microsoft will certainly re-enter the fray（吵架，争论）, although none of its operating systems seems a good fit for tablets. Nokia, too, has yet to unveil its plans.
ABI Research thinks only 8m will be sold worldwide this year and that they will not become a mass-market device before the middle of the decade, by which time it foresees annual sales of 57m. Even this would be less than the number of netbooks expected to be sold this year. And it is not even a third of the global market for smart-phones in 2009.
But tablets may still have a big impact, argues Carolina Milanesi of Gartner, another research firm. Television-makers, for instance, may introduce more interactive features and computer-makers launch app stores in response. All very gratifying for tablet manufacturers, no doubt, but not exactly a money-spinner（盈利的企业。）
发现最近小C特别爱找IPAD的新闻

凝羽欲翔UID: 2733350

23-1

A special report on South Africa The price of freedom Since embracing full democracy 16 years ago, South Africa has made huge strides. But, says Diana Geddes (interviewed here), not everything has changed for the better Jun 3rd 2010 | From The Economist print edition SPORT matters in South Africa. In his new year’s address to the nation, President Jacob Zuma described 2010 as “the most important year in our country since 1994”. To outsiders, playing host to this year’s football World Cup seemed perhaps a less momentous event than holding the country’s first fully democratic elections that established a black-majority government 16 years ago—especially when the national team, Bafana Bafana, may be knocked out in the first round. But with the kick-off on June 11th, just days after the country’s 100th birthday on May 31st, the world’s eyes will be on Africa’s leading economy for the next few weeks. Can the “miracle” nation, which won plaudits around the world for its peaceful transition to democracy after centuries of white-supremacist rule, conquer the bitter divisions of its past to turn itself into the “rainbow nation” of Nelson Mandela’s dreams? Or will it become ever more mired in bad governance, racial tension, poverty, corruption, violence and decay to turn into yet another African failed state? With Zimbabwe, its neighbour to the north, an ever-present reminder of what can happen after just a couple of decades of post-liberation single-party rule, many South Africans, black and white, worry that their country may be reaching a tipping point（卸载点）. Western fans arriving in South Africa for the World Cup could be forgiven for thinking that they were still in the rich world. Much of the infrastructure is as good as you will find anywhere—particularly those parts that have been given multi-million-dollar facelifts in preparation for the tournament. Ten spectacular stadiums have been newly built or upgraded at a cost of 15 billion rand (see box for currency conversions). Visitors arriving at O.R. Tambo, the main international airport, will be whisked （扫掉）into Johannesburg by the Gautrain, Africa’s first high-speed rail link (pictured above). And many of the country’s hotels and restaurants are world-class, including Bushmans Kloof hotel, three hours’ drive from Cape Town, recently voted the world’s best by Travel + Leisure website, and Cape Town’s La Colombe, ranked 12th in this year’s S.Pellegrino list of the best restaurants. Not as rich as it looks But in reality South Africa is no more than a middle-income developing country with a GDP per person of around $10,000 (at purchasing-power parity), a quarter of the American figure. On a per-head basis, it is the seventh-richest country in Africa by some measures. The average hides huge disparities（不同的，不一致的）. Under apartheid（种族隔离）, whites were encouraged to believe they were part of the Western world. It was only when they had to start sharing their streets, goods and services with their darker-skinned compatriots that they began to wonder whether they really were. Many now complain about falling standards. Yet most whites have done rather well since apartheid ended—better, in fact, than most blacks. They still enjoy a good life, helped by cheap domestic help and first-class private medical care and schools. For the majority of South Africa’s blacks, however, the living is not so easy. Although many of the poorest now get some kind of government support, it is only a pittance（少量的，津贴的）. Most blacks still live in shoddy shacks or bungalows without proper sanitation in poor crime-ridden townships outside the main cities. Their schools and hospitals are often in a dire state（情况很糟的）. And, in a country where there is little public transport, most blacks do not own a car. Although it has the world’s 24th-biggest economy, South Africa ranks a dismal 129th out of 182 on the UN’s Human Development Index (and 12th in Africa). The country’s constitution, adopted in 1996, is one of the most progressive in the world. It enshrines a wide range of social and economic rights as well as the more usual civil and political freedoms. Discrimination is banned not only on the grounds of race, gender, age and belief, but also of pregnancy, marital status, sexual orientation and culture. Every one of the country’s 49m people—79% black, 9% white, 9% coloured (mixed race) and 3% Asian/Indian—is guaranteed equal protection under the law. Freedom House, a Washington-based research foundation, gives South Africa a respectable rating of 2 in its “freedom in the world” index, where 1 is completely free and 7 totally unfree. South Africa is a land of contrasts. It has fabulous mineral wealth, with 90% of the world’s known platinum（白金） reserves, 80% of its manganese（锰）, 70% of its chrome（烙） and 40% of its gold, as well as rich coal deposits; yet 43% of its population live on less than $2 a day. It has just announced plans to develop a satellite programme (with India and Brazil) and is the leading candidate to host the world’s biggest science project, the Square Kilometre Array radio telescope; yet in international maths, science and reading tests it performs abysmally. It has sky-high unemployment yet at the same time suffers from crippling skills shortages. It was the first country to perform a heart transplant, and some of its doctors are still among the best anywhere; yet its people’s health record is among the world’s worst. And, leaving aside war zones, it is one of the most violent and crime-ridden（犯罪猖獗的） countries on the planet. This special report will look at South Africa the way that most of its people see it. The results are often harsh. The bright side Yet there are some encouraging signs that the contrasts are getting less stark（完全的，荒凉的，光秃秃的）. South Africa has recently cut its murder rate in half; virtually eradicated（摆脱，连根拔起的） severe malnutrition among the under-fives; increased the enrolment in schools of children aged seven to 15 to nearly 100%; provided welfare benefits for 15m people; and set up the world’s biggest antiretroviral treatment programme for HIV/AIDS. What about race? South Africa remains obsessed by it. That is hardly surprising after 350 years of racial polarisation（民族极端主义）, including nearly half a century of apartheid, when inter-racial sex was a criminal offence and non-whites were even banned from using the pavements. The subject waxes and wanes（兴衰成败，月满圆缺）. Only last August Mr Zuma was warning his compatriots against reviving the race debate. But the murder in April of Eugene Terre’Blanche, leader of a white-supremacist group, and the racist outbursts by Julius Malema, the leader of the powerful Youth League of the ruling African National Congress (ANC), have brought it to the fore again.