☆Blair的the Economist阅读学习贴

BlairZieUID: 2948805

Will Your Local Library Lend E-Books? (Or Can They?)By AUDREY WATTERS of ReadWriteWebPublished: November 11, 2010
Amazon has recently touted that sales of Kindle books are outstripping those of both hardcover(精裝) and paperback(平裝) editions. And a Forrester forecast earlier this week gauged that the sales from e-books for 2010 would hit over $1 billion. It seems as though the market for digital literature is strong.

tout: [v] 1 to try to persuade people that sb/sth jis important or valuable by praising them/it
             2 to try to persuade people to byour goods or services, esp by going to them and asking them directly
outstrip: [v] 1 becomelarger, more important.etc. than sb/sth
                   2 to be faster, better or more successful than a competitor
gauge:[v] 1 to make a judgement about sth, esp people's feelings or attitudes.
                2 to calculate sth approximately.

But according to some publishers, if libraries start lending e-books, it could serve to "undo the entire market for e-book sales." Those were the words of Stephen Page, CEO of the publisher Faber and Faber who spoke last month at a library conference in the U.K. and announced the Publisher Association's new stance on e-book lending via libraries.

undo: [v] 1 to make sb/sth fail
               2 to cancel the effect of sth
stance:[n] the opinions that sb has about sth and expresses publicly



Lending E-Books, But With Restrictions
He told those present that "all the major trade publishers have agreed to work with aggregators to make it possible for libraries to offer e-book lending" with the addition of certain "controls." These controls would require library patrons to be onsite in order to access the e-books. And furthermore, libraries will only be able to lend one copy of an e-book to one individual at any given time. Why, it's almost as if digitizing books did not free them from their physical confines.

aggregator:聚合(?)
patron: 赞助者，资助人
onsite: 现场

These restrictions hamper the access of those who cannot visit libraries in order to read books - the homebound and the disabled, for example. They make the process of interlibrary loan impossible. And honestly, they seem a little absurd. But these policies - both for personal and library lending - echo the sorts of restrictions that DRM has long demanded around music and movie sharing, and they come with the same sort of doom-and-gloom predictions should people be able to share content freely.

hamper: [v] to prevent sb from easily doing or achieving sth


Looking for (DRM-Free) Alternatives
But not all publishers are on board with this idea. Springer Verlag recently announced that it would make its e-books available without DRM restrictions to institutional purchases. "Libraries buy direct from us and they own the content," says the publisher's director of channel marketing George Scotti. "Once users download content, they can give it out, share, whatever. They own it. Some of our competitors are afraid to do this, but we say, free the content."

Challenging the publishing industry's attachment to DRM, in an article this weekend in the Guardian, Simon Barron contends that "Applying physical paradigms to digital commodities shows a lack of digital understanding. Cory Doctorow argues that trying to control digital copies of work on the internet is 'a fool's errand: that digital works require different models for control, distribution and profit. The price for trading in digital commodities is to accept the nature of digital commodities: they can be copied, they are accessible virtually anywhere, and that physical restrictions do not and cannot apply."

paradigm: [n] a typical example or pattern of sth
errand: 差事
commodity: 贸易


Libraries of the Future: Lending E-Books and E-Readers
Whether or not they can access DRM-free content from publishers, Some libraries are adapting. Recognizing the growing demand for e-books, they are pursuing not just the lending programs for e-books but those for e-readers as well, in order to help their patrons access material digitally. While the Terms of Service say you can't share your account information on the devices, the Library Journal suggests that Amazon may be simply turning a blind eye to the enforcement around this.

enforcement: 強制執行

Libraries will have to embrace digital books to stay relevant to readers looking for books. Of course libraries' relevance involves much more than simply being a repository for books, e- or otherwise. Libraries are community centers. They are places where people can access not just literature and the latest magazines, but also find Internet access and computer stations.

It's worth noting too, that despite the great role that libraries play in literacy and in the preservation of literature, they are only a small part of the buying market for books - less than 4% by Faber and Faber's own admission. So to say that allowing libraries to lend e-books will destroy the publishing industry seems - excuse my literary reference here - a bit of a tall tale.

tkiicppUID: 2842113

Op-Ed ContributorMy Endless New YorkBy TONY JUDTPublished: November 7, 2010
I CAME to New York University in 1987 on a whim. The Thatcherite assault on British higher education was just beginning and ...
BlairZie 发表于 2010-11-10 13:54

I can't finish this one, too much backgroud knowledge. I am going to sleep :sleepy:zzzzzzzzz

BlairZieUID: 2948805

昨天出去大玩...結果...
好吧，要克服自己小懶小推延的毛病，今天補起來啦

BlairZieUID: 2948805

BanyanThe dog that didn't bark
The curious silencing of China’s prime minister and his views on political reform Nov 11th 2010

IT WAS not the right time of year, and all previous Beijing “springs” have ended in far deeper floods of tears anyway. But it is still remarkable how swiftly a hopeful debate on political reform that seemed about to blossom in China a couple of months ago has been nipped in the bud. Hunched in a booth in a Beijing campus coffee shop, Hu Xingdou, a liberal academic and blogger, who has recently seen one of his posts deleted from the internet, has an explanation. China’s leaders are still stuck in the old mindset that political reform will lead to “chaos”.
To forestall the chaos, a low-key crackdown is under way. Dissidents have been harassed and detained for celebrating the award last month of the Nobel peace prize to Liu Xiaobo, a jailed activist. This week his lawyer was prevented from flying out of Beijing to Britain. A few days earlier, Ai Weiwei, a famous artist, was barred from leaving his house in Beijing to attend a mildly subversive banquet he was throwing in Shanghai. (Hundreds of guests turned up anyway to munch without him.)

nip: [v] 1 to give sb/sth a quick painful bite or pinch
            2 (of cold, wind, etc)to harm or damage sth
hunch: [v] to bend the top part of your body forward and raise your shoulders and back
            [n] a feeling that sth if true even though you do not have any evidence to prove it
booth: [n] 不受妨碍的封闭空间（电话亭、投票间等）
                临时货摊
               （餐厅中）卡座
mindset: [n]思维模式，思维倾向
forestall: [v] 预先阻止；在（他人）之前行动；先发制人
crackdown: sever action taken to restrict the activities of criminals
dissident: [n] a person who strongly disagrees with and criticizes their government, esp in a country where this kind of action is dangerous.
detain: [v] 拘留；扣押
                to delay sb or prevent them from going somewhere
subversive: [v] trying or likely to destroy or damage a government or political system by attacking it secretly or inditectly
munch: [v] to eat sth steadily and often noisily, esp sth crisp

Meanwhile, the official press, covering a plenary session of the Communist Party’s central committee last month, has run archaic-sounding commentaries on the virtues of “socialist democracy with Chinese characteristics” and the evils of the apparent alternative, “total Westernisation”. The point of “political structural reform”, the People’s Daily argued on its front page last month, was “not to weaken party leadership, but to strengthen and improve it.” That is not how many reformists see it.

plenary: [adj] [n] 1(of  meetings, etc) to be attended by everyone who has the right to attend
                          2 without any limit; complete

Some took that editorial as a rebuke to the prime minister, Wen Jiabao. He had set the political-reform ball rolling. In a speech in August in the southern boomtown of Shenzhen, to mark its 30th anniversary as one of China’s first Special Economic Zones, Mr Wen argued in unusually strong terms for the importance of political reform. Without it, he fretted, “China may lose what it has already achieved through economic reform.”

rebuke: [v] to speak severely to sb because they have done sth worong
fret: [v] to be worried or unhappy and not able to relax

Such remarks inspired a flurry of interest in “universal values”, the phrase that has come to encapsulate liberal hopes of pluralism. They also prompted Hu Xingdou, in his blog, to write of Mr Wen as “a real hero of the people” and “the direct successor to Deng Xiaoping in the cause of reform and opening-up.” But that was the post that ran foul of the censor. It seems odd for the government to press the delete key on a paean of praise to the prime minister. And Mr Wen is neither maverick nor powerless figurehead—he is a senior member of the party’s supreme body, the Politburo’s nine-member standing committee.
Yet he, too, in effect, has been censored. From Shenzhen, he took his enthusiasm for political reform abroad, spelling out to CNN some of the substance the vague phrase encompassed: “…such a democracy first and foremost should serve to ensure people’s right to democratic elections, oversight and decision-making.” Such remarks were little covered in the Chinese press.

flurry: [n] 1 an occasion when there is a lot of activity, interest, excitement, etc, within a short period of time.
encapsulate: [v] to express the most important parts of sth in a few words; a small spece or a single object.
pluralism: [n] 1 the existence of many different groups of people in one society, for example people of differenet races or of different politicall or religious beliefs.
                     2 not based on a single set of principles or beliefs.
foul: [n] very unpleasant; very bad
delete: 刪除
paean: [n] 赞歌
maverick: [n] expressing or sharing emotion in a way that is exaggerated or embarrassing

As ever in Chinese politics, you can interpret this in countless ways. But almost all of them are related to the party plenum last month and the five-yearly congress in 2012 for which it was preparing. That will see power shift to a new generation of rulers under Xi Jinping, China’s presumed next party leader and president. It would be surprising if there were not profound differences over one of the biggest issues China faces: how to adapt the political system, organised along Leninist lines and designed for a monolithic command economy, to suit modern China, with a booming private sector and fast-growing middle class.

plenum: [n] 全体会议
profound: [adj] 巨大的，深远的
monolith: [n] 1 a large single upright block of stone, esp one that was shaped into a column by people living in ancient times, and that may have had some religious meaning
                    2 a single, very large organization, etc. that is very slow to change and not interested in individual people.

One explanation of Mr Wen’s surprising solo performances, that they were for foreign ears alone and not to be taken seriously, seems unlikely. Politicians everywhere, and perhaps especially in China, never forget their domestic audiences. Another, favoured by some Chinese liberals, is that he heads a reformist strain in the party beaten back at the plenum by conservatives. Since then, Mr Wen himself has been silent on political reform. Or it may be that the party sees the appearance of political debate as a useful way of fending off pressure for real change.

fend off: 1 to defend or protect yourself from sb/sth that is attacking you
              2 to protect yourself from difficult questions, criticisms, etc. esp by avoiding them

Tony Saich, of the Kennedy School at Harvard, points out that such episodes, when the debate intrudes into the official press, have occurred a few times before at similar moments in the party’s political calendar over the past two decades. Yet political reform itself has been confined to tinkering at the margins, and has largely stagnated. Village-level elections have not been replicated in townships. The National People’s Congress remains a rubber-stamp parliament. And, as has been seen in recent weeks, restrictions on the freedom of speech remain fierce.

tinker: [v] to make small changes to sth in order to repair or improve it
stagnate: [v]1 to stop developing or making progress
parliament: 议会

It’s alright, Ma, I’m only surfing
Despite that, Chinese politics has over this period been transformed: by the explosion of the middle class, by the internet, and by the emergence of a new generation with a very different outlook from their parents’. Mr Hu says none of his students has any interest in democracy, being focused on their careers. Writing in Time a year ago, Ai Weiwei, the artist, agreed the young do not share the idealism of the Tiananmen generation of students in the 1980s. But he saw their practical bent as a reason for optimism. “They aren’t ready to march in the streets, but they are equally unwilling to be told what they can or can’t read and discuss online. They simply want to be free to live their own lives.” Sooner or later, that wish will collide with the party’s control-freakery, and some sort of change will have to come.

collide: [v] to disagree strongly

Already China is far freer than it was. In another Beijing coffee shop, a disgruntled intellectual rants about the party’s shortcomings and failure to embrace political reform. He even asks the staff to turn down the Bob Dylan song playing in the background so that he can be heard—and overheard—more clearly. But he would prefer not to be named.

disgruntled: [adj] annoyed or disappointed because sth has happened to upset you
rant: [v] to speakor complain about sth in a loud and/or angry way.

BlairZieUID: 2948805

SchumpeterSticking together
Advice on managing partnerships, courtesy of Keith Richards and Michael Eisner Nov 11th 2010

FEW people will read Keith Richards’s book, “Life”, for its insights on business. There are far more exciting things to learn about. Where did Mr Richards first have sex with Anita Pallenberg? (In the back of his Bentley, somewhere between Barcelona and Valencia, apparently.) What are his reflections on the mayhem at the Altamont concert? (“If it hadn’t been for the murder, we’d have thought it a very smooth gig.”) How did he survive all those years of self-medication? (He took the finest heroin and cocaine, and avoided “Mexican shoe-scrapings”.)

mayhem: [n] 骚乱，混乱

But “Life” does nevertheless throw light on one of the most intriguing problems in business—how to keep a creative partnership alive. The music business “is one of the sleaziest businesses there is”, Mr Richards argues, only one step above gangsterism. Most partnerships, from Lennon and McCartney on down, are destroyed by a lethal cocktail of ego, greed and lust. But, for all their ups and downs, Keith Richards and Mick Jagger have been in business together for half a century.

intriguing: [adj] very interesting because of being unusual or not having an obvious answer
sleazie: [n] 1 dishonest, immoral or illegal behavious, esp by politicians
                  2 behaviour or conditions that are immoral, unpleasant and not socially acceptable
lethal: [adj] causing or able to cause death
                  causing or able to cause a lot of harm or damage

Most business pundits have little interesting to say about partnerships. Journalists focus on solo superheroes—all those mighty chief executives and mould-breaking entrepreneurs. Management gurus fixate on the next big trend in such areas as innovation or business models. But there are signs that the subject is starting to get the attention it deserves. Michael Eisner, a former boss of Disney, devoted a recent book to it, “Working Together: Why Great Partnerships Succeed”.

pundit: [n] a person who knows a lot about a particular subject and who often talks about it in public

A striking number of businesses were created by partners, despite all the fuss made over lone geniuses. Where would Goldman have been without Sachs? Or Hewlett without Packard? Arthur Blank and Bernie Marcus—known as BernieArthur to their colleagues—revolutionised the retail business when they founded The Home Depot. Bill Gates worked with a succession of partners while he was at Microsoft—most notably Paul Allen and then Steve Ballmer—and now runs his foundation with his wife, Melinda. (“I’ve never done anything solo”, he told Mr Eisner, “except take tests”.) Warren Buffett has worked with Charlie Munger, his sidekick, confidant and best friend, since before the Rolling Stones were formed.
(cooperation的例子）

It must be said that successful partnerships are rather rarer than failed ones: business people tend to be alpha types, and money and fame can destroy even the solidest friendships. Disney thrived when Mr Eisner was running it jointly with Frank Wells. But when Mr Wells died and Mr Eisner tried to replace him with Michael Ovitz the result was a disaster: the rows prompted key people to leave, and Mr Ovitz himself quit after 14 months, with a sizeable pay-off.

alpha: [n] sth that is first
prompt: [adj] 1 doing without delay
                     2 acting without delay
             [v]  to make sb decide to do sth; to cause sth to happen

Dysfunctional partnerships seem to be particularly common in high-tech industries. Although Google’s Larry Page and Sergey Brin remain so close that they share an office, Facebook and Twitter have both been plagued by feuds between founders: Twitter’s Evan Williams failed to get on with Jack Dorsey; and Mark Zuckerberg has a testy relationship with Facebook’s other surviving founder, Dustin Moskovitz.

dysfunctional: [adj] not working in a satisfactory or successful way
plague: [v] 1 to cause pain or trouble to sb/sth over a period of time
                  2 to annoy sb or create problems, esp by asking for sth, demanding attention, etc.
feud: [n;v] and angry an dbitter argument between two people or groups of people that continues over a long period of time
testy: [adj] easily annoyed or irritated

There are few iron rules on why some partnerships succeed where most fail. Messrs Buffett and Munger seem to get along effortlessly, as if joined by a chemical bond. Mr Gates, however, has had to work at his partnerships: after leaving the chief executive’s chair at Microsoft he almost drove Mr Ballmer to distraction and the two had to make peace over dinner in 2001. But Mr Eisner argues that there are some general principles that increase the chances of success. Partners need to be able to trust each other absolutely. Mr Eisner notes that many successful partners split the profits down the middle regardless of their contribution to particular projects. Partners also need to possess a delicate balance between similarities and differences. A striking number of successful partners combine similar backgrounds with very different attitudes to fame. Messrs Buffett and Munger are Midwesterners who grew up a few miles from each other. But Mr Buffett adores the limelight whereas Mr Munger prefers the shadows.

distraction: [n] a thing that takes your attention away from waht you are doing or thinking about.
                       a activity that amuses or entertains you
limelight: [n] the centre of public attention.

Not fading away
Mr Richards echoes many of these arguments. He also has some good advice on how to repair your partnership after it has been torn apart by money and fame. Messrs Jagger and Richards enjoyed the solidest partnership in the music industry: “Glimmer Twins”, as they called themselves, who had fallen in love with American blues as teenagers in London. Mr Richards laid down the riffs and Mr Jagger provided the vocal pyrotechnics. But time took its toll. Mr Richards’s decision to give up heroin destroyed the delicate division of labour in which Mr Jagger took care of the details while Mr Richards took the drugs. Mr Jagger started to refer to the Stones as “his” band. He even performed the group’s songs on solo tours. A formal break-up looked likely.

riff: 歌曲的重复段
pyrotechnics: [n] a clever and complicated display of skill

But in 1989 the two decided to solve their problems in the same businesslike way as Messrs Gates and Ballmer. They met on neutral turf—Barbados—and thrashed out their differences. Three things helped them to succeed where so many other bands have split: their “under-rooted friendship”, as Mr Richards puts it, forged in London in the 1960s; their recognition that they were much better together than apart (who remembers any of their solo work?); and their mutual love of money.

thrash out: to discuss a situation or problem thotoughly in order to decide sth
forge: [v] to put a lot of effort into making sth successful or strong so that it will last
               to make an ilegal copy of sth in order to deceive people
               to shape metal by heating it in a fire and hitting it with a hammer; to make an object in this way
               to move forward in a steady but powerful way

There are clearly still tensions between the two: Mr Richards takes a perverse delight in mocking Sir Mick’s “tiny todger”, for example. But after 50 years as partners Mick and Keith still recognise that “I pull things out of him; he pulls things out of me.” At a time when the French are griping about raising the retirement age to 62 these doughty senior citizens (Mick is 67, Keith 66) are contemplating yet another world tour.

grip: 抱怨
doughty: [adj] brave and srong

BlairZieUID: 2948805

Facebook Offers New Messaging Tool

Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, on Monday in San Francisco. He announced details of a new messaging service, which he says was prompted by conversations with teenagers.

By MIGUEL HELFT Published: November 15, 2010



SAN FRANCISCO — Since the heyday of AOL’s cheery “You’ve got mail” greeting, e-mail has been central to the online experience for millions of people.
But Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive of Facebook, says e-mail is showing its age. In his view, e-mail is too slow, too formal and too cumbersome, especially for young people who have grown up using text messages and online chats.

On Monday, Mr. Zuckerberg introduced a new unified messaging system for Facebook that allows people to communicate with one another on the Web and on mobile phones regardless of whether they are using e-mail, text messages or online chat services. “We don’t think a modern messaging system is going to be e-mail,” he said.

The new service, Facebook Messages, is a bold move by Facebook to expand from a social network into a full-fledged communications system. It could help the company chip away even more at Internet portals like Google, Yahoo, MSN and AOL, which have used e-mail as one of their main draws with consumers.
Americans already spend more time on Facebook than on any other Web site, and more than 500 million people around the world have signed up for it.
Analysts say that if Facebook Messages proves successful, it could greatly increase the time users spend on the site, making Facebook even more dominant.
Some analysts say, however, that the company will face a number of challenges, like managing spam, getting users to change ingrained habits and persuading some to entrust their confidential e-mail to a company whose privacy practices have often drawn scrutiny.

fledged: [adj] able to fly
chip away: 蚕食
portal:门户网站
spam:垃圾邮件

What’s more, Mr. Zuckerberg, while successful in turning Facebook into a behemoth, has at times failed to accurately gauge technology trends. In 2007, he described a new advertising system released by Facebook as a “once-in-a-century” shift in media, but was forced to pull the plug on the service amid a storm of privacy complaints. That incident and others suggest he tends to overestimate how open people want to be with their personal information.

behemoth: 巨兽
gauge: [v] to make a judgement abut sth, esp people's feelings or attitudes.
overestimate: 过度估计

The new service, which will encourage users to sign up for an e-mail address ending in @facebook.com, has the immediacy of instant messaging and chat built in. Mr. Zuckerberg sought to play down the threat that Facebook Messages would pose to existing e-mail services.
“This is not an e-mail killer,” Mr. Zuckerberg said, adding: “We don’t expect anyone to wake up tomorrow and say they are going to shut down” their current e-mail accounts.
In addition to channeling all e-mails, text messages and chats through a single point, Facebook Messages will offer users what Mr. Zuckerberg called a “social in-box” that will prioritize messages from friends and close acquaintances, potentially saving time. And it will make it easy for people to retrieve all the communications they’ve had with a person through various channels. The service is invitation-only for now, and will be introduced to all users over the next few months.

retrieve:[v]1 to bring or get sth back, esp from a place where it should not be
                 2 to find and get back data or information that has been stored in the memory of a computer
                 3 to make a bad situation better; to get back sth that was lost

Some analysts said that over time users were likely to spend more time using Facebook Messages and less with their traditional e-mail services, especially as they communicate with their closest friends and associates.
“They just made it so much more compelling to center my communications on Facebook rather than anywhere else,” said Charlene Li, an analyst with the Altimeter Group. “Google, Microsoft, Yahoo should all be worried.”
Ms. Li said that e-mail was already being “nibbled to death” by services like instant messaging and chat, and that Facebook Messages, if successful, would accelerate that trend.

nibble: a small bite of sth

Still, for more than a decade, technology companies have sought to offer services for “unified communications,” often without much success outside of the business market. And other e-mail providers, including AOL, Google and Yahoo, have taken steps to make their e-mail services more “social,” by prioritizing the messages of friends or integrating text messages. “Just like it is not easy for traditional e-mail companies to compete in social, it is not going to be easy for social companies to compete with e-mail,” said Brad Garlinghouse, president for consumer applications at AOL, which on Sunday unveiled a service that also allows consumers to consolidate e-mail and other messaging accounts in one place. Mr. Garlinghouse said that, for example, Facebook’s efforts to use connections between users to prioritize their incoming mail might be fraught with peril.

consolidate: [v] 1 to make a position of power or success stronger so that it iis more likely to continue.
                         2 to join things together into one; to be joined into one
fraught: [adj] 1 fiiled with sth unpeasant
                     2 causing or feeling worry and anxiety
peril: [n] 1 serious danger
              2 the fact of sth being dangerous or harmful         

“I am not friends on Facebook with my accountant, with my doctor, or with United Airlines,” he said, but messages from any one of those sources could be urgent. Kakul Srivastava, a vice president in charge of communications products at Yahoo, said, “Integrated communications is definitely something that people are looking for.” Ms. Srivastava says Yahoo users already send 2.5 billion instant messages a month and four million to five million text messages a day using Yahoo Mail. Mr. Zuckerberg, who is 26, said the idea for the service came out of conversations he had with teenagers nearly two years ago. While the teenagers said they all had e-mail accounts, they told Mr. Zuckerberg that they did not use them very often. “Talking with high-schoolers makes me feel really old,” Mr. Zuckerberg joked.

Mr. Zuckerberg says 350 million Facebook users already use its messaging service, exchanging more than four billion messages each day.
The new Messages product will not require users to get a facebook.com address, but users who do not will not be able to receive messages from outside Facebook. The 15-month effort to develop Messages was the biggest engineering project that Facebook had undertaken, involving 15 engineers, Mr. Zuckerberg said.

BlairZieUID: 2948805

Why is America so rich?
Nov 9th 2010, 13:50 by R.A. | LONDON

ECONOMIC gloom and doom aside, America remains the world's richest large country. It's generally estimated to have a per capita GDP level around $45,000, while the richest European nations manage only a $40,000 or so per capita GDP (setting aside low population, oil-rich states like Norway). Wealth underlies America's sense of itself as a special country, and it's also cited as evidence that America is better than other economies on a range of variables, from economic freedom to optimism to business savvy to work ethic.

underlie: [v] to be the basis ot cause of sth
savvy: [n] knowledge or understanding of sth
           [adj] having practical knowledge and udnerstanding of sth; having common sense
variable: [adj] 1 often changing; likely to change
                      2 able to be changed
               [n] a situation, number or quantity that can vary or be varied变量
ethic: [n] 1 moral principles that control or influnence a person's behaviour
               2 a system of moral principles or rules of behaviour道德体系     

But why exactly is America so rich? Karl Smith ventures an explanation:

venture: [v] to say or do sth in a careful way, esp because itmight upset or offend sb.

I am going to go pretty conventional on this one and say a combination of three big factors

• The Common Law
• Massive Immigration
• The Great Scientific Exodus during WWII

You’ll notice that four of the top five countries in the Human Development Index have the Common Law and the top, Norway, is a awash in oil. Without the petro-kronors they probably wouldn’t be so hot.
You’ll also notice that 3 of the top 4, again with Norway the odd man out, are immigrant nations. The founder effect here should be clear.
The bonus from the great exodus is definitely waning. Most of our hey-day German and Jewish scientists are dying off, but its still given us a boost that lingers to this day. There is no fundamental reason why the US should be the center of the scientific world but for a time it was the only place in the world safe for many scientists.

awash: [adj] covered or flooded with water
                    having sth in latge quantities
founder: [v] 1 to fail because of a particular problem or difficulty
                   2 to fill with water and sink (ship)
bonus:[n] 奖金，意外收获
exodus:[n] a situation in which many people leave a place at the same time
wane:[v] to become gradually weaker or less important

It's a difficult question to tackle because there's so very much to it. America jumped to a huge productivity lead early last century by developing a resource- and capital-intense, high-throughput style of manufacturing producing mass market goods. The fractious, class-riven European continent struggled to copy this technology, and while adoption of these methods eventually led to a period of rapid catch-up growth, the process of catch-up was never quite completed. And so that's one gap to explore.

lead: [n] an example or action for people to copy
throughput:[n] (某一时期的)生产量，接待人数
fractious: [adj] 1 bad-tempered or easily upset, especially be small things
                       2 make trouble and complaining

There's also the question of what exactly one is comparing. What if we take similar European and American metropolitan areas and adjust for human capital and hours worked? On that basis, the difference between America and northern Europe looks relatively small. One might then focus on the ways in which America's more integrated domestic market leads to a lower level of within-continent inequality, even though national inequality levels in Europe compare favourably with America's.

The size of the market may be more important than we imagine. As Mr Smith notes, four of the top five HDI countries share the Common Law. They also speak English. In a world in which national and cultural barriers still bite, America's wealth could be chalked up to the fact that it's a uniquely large and uniform nation. Common rules, culture, language, and so on facilitate high levels of trade and mobility. National and cultural barriers within Europe, by contrast, work to limit the extent to which the economic potential of the continent can be reached.

chalk up to: to consider that sth is caused by sth
facilitate: [v] to make an action or a process possible or easier.

Mr Smith also gets at something important in discussing immigration and talent. The economic geography of the world is lumpy, and talent likes to clump together into centres of innovation. Through fortune and foresight, America managed to develop world-leading centres of talent in places like Silicon Valley, Boston, and New York. Relatively open immigration rules and the promise of a safe harbour for war refugees, including persecuted Jews, helped build these knowledge centres. When one combines that innovative capacity with a system that makes it relatively easy to develop ideas and relatively lucrative to exploit them economically, the potential is there for rapid and sustained growth.

lumpy: [n] full of lumps; covered in lumps
clump: [v] to come tofether or be brought together to form a tight group
refugee: [n] 避难者，难民，逃亡者
lucrative:[adj] producing a large amount of money; making a large profit
exploit: [v] 1 to treat a person or situation as an oppotunity to gain an advantage for yourself
                 2 to treat sb unfairly by making them work and not fiving them much in return
                 3 to use sth weel in order to gain as much from it as possible
                 4 to develop or use sth for business or industry

America does seem to be special in important ways, but it's not always clear what those ways are. A liberal economic order and geographically mobile population are important, but so is the level of education, the promise of social mobility, and the openness of America's borders. It's worth keeping all of that in mind as the country's leaders think about the ways economic policy should change in the wake of the Great Recession.

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China's rising pricesHunting down the hoarders
To rein in prices, the Chinese government turns to unconventional measures Nov 18th 2010 | HONG KONG

LENIN thought inflation a subversive force, as damaging to capitalism as any Bolshevik revolutionary. Certainly, his heirs in the Chinese Communist Party are taking no chances. On November 17th the State Council, China’s cabinet, promised “forceful measures” to stabilise prices. It said it would drum up supply and crack down on hoarders and speculators. It even threatened to “interfere” with the prices of daily necessities, which might include grains, cooking oils, sugar and cotton.

subversive:颠覆
stabilise: to become or to make sth become firm, steady and unllikely to change; to make sth stable.
drum up: to try haard to get support or business
hoard: a collection of money, food, valuable objects,etc.
            囤積
speculator: 投機者

Inflation is not yet a threat to the republic. But consumer prices rose by 4.4% in the year to October, the fastest rise for over two years. Food prices, which account for more than a third of the consumer-price index, are largely to blame: vegetables are almost a third more expensive than they were a year ago. Even the most exotic commodities have been affected. As China’s prices rise, consumer confidence and the stockmarket are falling. Shanghai shares have fallen by a tenth since the inflation figures came out.

exotic: from or in antother country, especially a tropical one; seeming exciting and unusual because it is connected with foreign countries.
commodity: 1 a product or a raw material that can be bought and sold, esp between countries
                   2 a thing that is useful or h as a useful quality

Rising food prices may explain China’s inflation, but what is behind their rise? Floods, including a deluge in Hainan province last month, hurt some crops. Harvests have also disappointed elsewhere in the world: the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation said this week that the cost of the world’s food imports may exceed $1 trillion this year, only $5 billion short of the record bill in 2008.

deluge: 洪水

The macroeconomic weather has also played a role. China’s banks appear determined to breach their quota of 7.5 trillion yuan ($1.1 trillion) of new loans this year. The People’s Bank of China raised their reserve requirements this month for the fourth time this year and lifted interest rates in October for the first time since 2007. But neither step will do much to constrain banks swimming in deposits and lending to an economy growing, in nominal terms, by 15% a year.

breach: to not keep to an agreement or not keep a promise
             to make a hole in a wall, fence, etc, so that sb/sth can go throught it
quota: the limited number or amount of people or things that is officially allowed
           an amount of sth that sb expects or needs to have or achieve
nominal: being sth in name ony, and not in reality
              very small and much less than the normal

And so the government is reaching for less conventional weapons. To shield the vulnerable, it urged local governments to raise unemployment benefits, pensions and the minimum wage in line with inflation. It also promises to increase shipments of cotton from the western region of Xinjiang, and to cut the price of electricity, gas and rail transport for fertiliser makers. To keep the population sweet, on November 22nd it will sell 200,000 tonnes of sugar.

pension: 退休金
shipment: 出貨

If extra supplies do not curb prices, the government may set caps. It may repeat the kinds of measures it imposed in 2008, when food inflation topped 23% after an outbreak of disease killed many of China’s pigs. Then, the government required sellers of pork, rice, noodles, cooking oil and other staples to ask permission before raising their prices.

curb: to control or limitt sth, esp sth bad
set cap: 设定上限

Such controls serve as an “extreme signal” of the government’s determination to fight inflation, note Mark Williams and Qinwei Wang of Capital Economics. That may help quash self-fulfilling expectations of higher prices. But beyond that, price controls have “little to commend them.” If sellers cannot fetch a good price, they will limit the supply of what they offer, or adulterate the quality. Whenever the government stops petrol prices from rising in line with oil prices, queues at the pump merely lengthen.

quash: to officially say that a decision in a court of law is no longer valid or correct
            to take action to stop sth from continuing
adulterate: (在飲食中)參假
fetch: to be sold for a particular price
queue:插队

Inflation undermines capitalism, according to Keynes, in part because it discredits entrepreneurs. They become “profiteers” in the eyes of those hurt by rising prices. China’s leaders promise to hunt down and punish hoarders and speculators. According to Andy Rothman of CLSA, a broker, some traders are taking possession of agricultural commodities in the hopes that prices will rise. But how to stop households buying two bottles of cooking oil rather than one?

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Innovation in ITThe liquefaction of hardware
The rise of the virtual computer Nov 18th 2010




IMAGINE a personal computer that has two souls. One moment it is your work machine, complete with a set of corporate applications and tight security settings. Then it becomes an entertainment centre, allowing you to watch any video and download any program.

Thanks to a process called “virtualisation”, such computers are now being created. Ever more processing power and clever software are allowing devices of all kinds to separate from their hardware vessels and move to new homes. If this process continues as some expect, it will change computing radically. And more than one IT company will have to rethink how it does business.

virtualisation: 虚拟化

Virtualisation dates back to the age of mainframe computers. To make better use of them they were sometimes split into smaller “virtual machines”, each of which could run its own operating system and application. But the approach took off only in recent years, when VMWare, a software firm, applied it to servers, the powerful computers that populate today’s corporate data centres. VMWare and its main rivals, Citrix and Microsoft, have since developed all kinds of software tools to manage virtual machines—moving them between data centres, for example.

mainframe: a large powerful computer, usually the centre of a network and shared by many users
split into: to divide, or to make sth divide, into two or more parts
populate: 1 to live in an area and form its population
                2 to move people or animals to an area to live there

The success of server virtualisation has inspired IT firms and their customers to do the same thing with other types of hardware, such as devices to store data. Software now pools their capacity and allocates “virtual disks” as needed. Going further, Dropbox, an online storage service, saves identical files only once. Even large files can take only seconds to upload if they already exist somewhere on one of these firms’ disks.

The virtualisation of PCs is now under way. Many company computers can already work with applications that run on a central server.But start-ups are pushing the concept further. Desktone offers virtual desktops as an online service. NComputing, a maker of computer terminals, virtualises PCs so they can be shared by up to 30 users. It has already sold more than 2.5m devices, mostly to developing countries and schools. And technology from MokaFive can send an entire virtual machine—complete with operating systems, applications and data—over the network and install it on any PC. Eventually people may no longer need to carry laptops at all. Virtual computers, including data and applications, will follow them everywhere.

In the long run, smartphones and other mobile devices may also become shells to be filled as needed. Open Kernel Labs, a start-up in which Citrix has a stake, already lets smartphones run applications, multimedia and radio functions on a single processor, cutting manufacturing costs. Software from Citrix turns the iPad, Apple’s tablet computer, into a terminal for applications that run in a corporate data centre.

How quickly will virtualisation advance? Gartner, a market-research firm, predicts that the overall market for virtualisation software will grow from $2.7 billion this year to $6.3 billion in 2014. There is certainly no lack of demand. Virtualisation lowers costs by enabling firms to make better use of their servers and buy fewer new ones. The technology also allows PCs to be maintained remotely, which is much cheaper. But improved reliability and security are even more of an attraction. Users of MokaFive, for instance, can relaunch their virtual machine should a computer virus infect it. And it can be shut down if a laptop is lost or stolen.

remotely: [adv] 1 to a very slight degree
                        2 from a disance
relaunch: [v] to start or present sth again in a new or different way, esp a product from sale
infect: [v] 1 to make a disease or an illness spread to a person, an animal or a plant
               2 to make a substance contain harmful bacteria that can spread disease

Yet the technology also has to overcome a few hurdles. The virtualisation of servers is well understood, but for PCs and mobile devices the technique has yet to mature. In the longer run institutional barriers will prove more of a problem, argues Simon Crosby, Citrix’s chief technology officer. Virtualising IT systems, he says, is only the first step to automating their management. This is seen as a threat to existing workers and makes many IT departments hesitant to embrace the technology.

hurdle:[n] a problem o r difficulty that must be solved or dealt with before you can achieve sth
automate: [v] to use machines and computers instead of people to do a job or task

Still, analysts believe virtualisation will win out. Its impact will be felt through the industry. The technology not only makes IT systems more flexible, but allows firms to switch vendors more easily—which will weigh on the vendors’ profits. Big software firms such as Microsoft and Oracle may be hit hardest. But many hardware-makers may suffer as well, since their wares will become even more of a commodity than they are today.

weigh on: to make sb anxious or worried
commodity: 贸易

What’s up, BYOC?
Moreover, virtualisation makes it much easier to add new servers or storage devices. Alternatively, firms can simply rent extra capacity from operators of what are called “computing clouds”, such as Amazon Web Services. That outfit has built a network of data centres in which virtual machines and disks can be launched in seconds. As a result, IT systems will increasingly no longer be a capital expense, but an operational cost, like electricity.

Yet the most noticeable change for computer users will be that more employees will be allowed to bring their own PC or smartphone to work, says Brian Madden of TechTarget, a consultancy. Companies can install a secure virtual heart on private machines, doing away with the need for a separate corporate device. A “bring your own computer” or “BYOC” movement has already emerged in America. Companies such as Citrix and Kraft Foods pay their employees a stipend, which they can use to buy any PC they want—even an Apple Mac.

secure: 安全
stipend: an amount of money that is  paid regularly to sb, esp a priest, as wages or money to live on

Such innovations may help to ease growing tensions between workers and IT departments. New privacy regulations and rampant cybercrime are pushing firms to tighten control of company PCs and smartphones. At the same time more and more “digital natives” enter the workforce. They have grown up with the freewheeling internet and do not suffer boring black corporate laptops gladly. Giving workers more freedom while helping firms keep control may prove to be the biggest benefit of virtualisation.

rampant: [adj] (of sth bad) existing or spreading everywhere in a way that cannot be controlled
gladly: [adv] 1 willingly
                    2 happily; with thanks

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TelevisionChina's got viewers
Despite government meddling and rampant piracy, commercial television is surging in the Middle Kingdom Nov 18th 2010 | Shanghai | from PRINT EDITION




LAST month Liu Wei, an armless pianist and singer, won the first series of “China’s Got Talent”. En route to victory, he defeated bellydancers, comedians and a pig impersonator. The talent show was a ratings triumph: a third of all televisions in the Shanghai area tuned in for the final. But Yang Wenhong, vice-president of Shanghai Media Group, is just as pleased that the Communist Party’s media regulator praised the programme for conveying an uplifting message. In China, it is not enough merely to please the masses.

en route: [adv] on the way
impersonator:[n] a person who copies the way another  person talks or behaves in order to entertain people

China’s television business has developed largely in isolation from the rest of the world. Despite heroic efforts, particularly by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, Western media firms have been unable to launch mainland channels. They have been restricted to TV sets in Hong Kong and in expensive hotels, or reduced to selling the odd programme to domestic networks. But isolation does not mean Chinese television is stagnating. On the contrary: it is progressing at a lunatic pace.

stagnate: [v] 1 to stop developing or making progress
                     2 to be or become stagnant
lunatic: [adj] crazy, ridiculous or extremely stupid

Money is pouring in. Last week China Central Television (CCTV) announced that it had already booked 12.7 billion yuan ($1.9 billion) of advertising for 2011—16% more than it had sold at this point last year. Total television advertising has grown sevenfold since 2001. It is by far the richest medium: fully 63% of all advertising spending in China this year will be on television, compared with just 28% in Britain. Andrew Carter of GroupM, the media-investment firm which issues these estimates, explains that television is well-suited to bringing new products and brands to the attention of China’s fast-growing middle class.






The box used to be dominated by the state-run CCTV, which is controlled by the Communist Party’s publicity department. But despite the launch of new channels—it currently has 15, including one dedicated to opera—CCTV’s share of viewing is falling (see chart). Earlier this year it was overtaken by the combined audience of provincial broadcasters like Shanghai Media Group, Hunan TV and Zhejiang TV, which can each distribute one channel nationally. These provincial outfits, which are less controlled by Beijing, are locked in a fierce, untidy and occasionally underhanded struggle for viewers.

dedicated: [adj] designed to do only one particular type of work; used for one particular purpose only
launch: [v] to make a product available to the public for the first time.
distribute: [v] to spread sth, or different parts of sth, voer an area.
untidy: [adj] 1 not neat or well arranged; in a state of disorder
                   2 not keeping things neat or well organized
underhand: [adj] secret and dishonest

Not only do many of their shows resemble British and American programmes like “Pop Idol” and “The Apprentice”. They also rip off each other’s formats. “If a show is successful, clones appear almost instantly,” says Rebecca Yang of IPCN, a firm that brokers formats. A few years ago there was an explosion of talent competitions. Then one show offended the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (SARFT), not least(尤其) by conducting a huge text-message vote. Channels are now restricted to one such show per year. Judges are discouraged from abusing contestants and voting is restricted.

format: [n] the general arrangement, plan, design, etc. of sth

That has become a pattern. As talent competitions became more staid, producers turned their attention to dating shows, churning out programmes that encouraged bitchiness. Last summer one stepped over the line. A contestant on “If You Are the One” declared that she would rather cry in a BMW than smile on the back of a boyfriend’s bicycle. The host was promptly replaced by a psychology professor, but it was too late. SARFT has promulgated rules banning lewd comments and other moral provocations.

promulgate: [v] 1 spread an idea, a belief, etc. among many people
                         2 to announce a new law or system officially or publicly      

Why are these troublesome, populist broadcasters allowed to operate at all? Because the Chinese government wants people to watch television. The living-room set is a crucial conduit between the state and the masses. However ribald their programming at other times, at seven o’clock in the evening almost all channels carry CCTV’s starchy news broadcast, in which unsmiling anchors relay the latest utterances from party officials. If television becomes too dull, that show would lose its audience. After all, many Chinese can go elsewhere for entertainment.

populist: [n] a type of politices that claims to represent the opinions and wishes of ordinary people 民粹主义
conduit: [n] 中转机构，中转人
ribald:[adj] referring to sex in a rude but humorous way
starchy: [adj] 富含淀粉的

Data from the Chinese Marketing and Media Study suggest that the internet accounts for 33% of all media use among 18- to 34-year-olds in Shanghai, compared with just 28% for television. Shanghai is an unusually forward-looking city, and people tend to underestimate their television watching. But internet video is undoubtably bigger in China than elsewhere. Victor Koo, chief executive of Youku, a video portal, says the average user spends an hour each day on his website. In contrast, people spend less than ten minutes each day on the America-based YouTube.

Some Chinese use online video as a way of catching up on programmes that they missed (very few have digital video recorders). But many use it to gorge on pirated(盜版) Hollywood shows. Subtitled versions of programmes like “Gossip Girl” circulate in China just a few hours after they are broadcast in America. So widespread is pirated television that it has created stars. Wentworth Miller, who is best-known for his role in the Fox television show “Prison Break”, is mobbed when he visits China, and is the face of General Motors in the country. Yet “Prison Break” is not shown on any Chinese television network.

gorge on: to eat a lot of th, until you are too full to eat anymore
circulate: [v] spread; passed from one person to another

Broadcasters are thus caught between the state and the market, between conformity and populism. Both of their audiences are fickle: regulators clamp down on shows with little warning, whereas viewers are liable to switch off and watch pirated videos online or on DVD. Yet in some ways the business is settling down.

conformity:[n] behaviour or actions that follow the accepted rules of society
fickle: [adj] 1 changing often and suddenly
                  2 often changing their mind in an unreasonable way so that you cannot rely on them
clamp down: to take strict action in order to prevent sth, esp crime.

Searching for the X factor
China’s provincial television outfits are consolidating, with the stronger broadcasters piggybacking on the weaker broadcasters’ national networks. Earlier this year Hunan TV persuaded Qinghai Satellite TV to carry some of its programmes. Shanghai Media Group secured national carriage for its local business channel by doing a deal with a broadcaster in Ningxia. Gradually, half a dozen strong television companies are emerging. A few are branching out: Shanghai Media Group publishes magazines and offers broadband service.

piggyback on: to use sth that already exists as a suppost for our own work; to use a larger organization, etc. for our own advantage

Flush with money, and determined to differentiate themselves from a mass of cheap knock-offs, China’s larger provincial broadcasters are beginning to import foreign programme formats legitimately. Increasingly it is not enough to have (or to borrow) a good idea for a programme; broadcasters must create professional-looking content. They must also learn to work with sponsors. New restrictions on television advertising mean that money is flowing into product placement. Helen Yang, president of Vivid Media, an independent production company, says her company has moved from making programmes to creating marketing solutions for companies. That adds a layer of complexity, favouring the biggest outfits.

Chinese broadcasters are quickly learning how to produce slick-looking television. In a few years, predicts Ms Yang at Shanghai Media Group, they will be able to develop compelling programme formats of their own. And then, who knows? The notion of China as an exporter of culture may seem far-fetched. But it was once hard to imagine the country churning out advanced telecoms equipment.

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Global powerThe dangers of a rising China
China and America are bound to be rivals, but they do not have to be antagonists Dec 2nd 2010 | from PRINT EDITION


TOWARDS the end of 2003 and early in 2004 China’s most senior leaders put aside the routine of governing 1.3 billion people to spend a couple of afternoons studying the rise of great powers. You can imagine history’s grim inventory of war and destruction being laid out before them as they examined how, from the 15th century, empires and upstarts had often fought for supremacy. And you can imagine them moving on to the real subject of their inquiry: whether China will be able to take its place at the top without anyone resorting to arms.

In many ways China has made efforts to try to reassure an anxious world. It has repeatedly promised that it means only peace. It has spent freely on aid and investment, settled border disputes with its neighbours and rolled up its sleeves in UN peacekeeping forces and international organisations. When North Korea shelled a South Korean island last month China did at least try to create a framework to rein in its neighbour.

But reasonable China sometimes gives way to aggressive China. In March, when the North sank a South Korean warship, killing 46 sailors, China failed to issue any condemnation. A few months later it fell out with Japan over some Chinese fishermen, arrested for ramming Japanese coastguard vessels around some disputed islands—and then it locked up some Japanese businessmen and withheld exports of rare earths vital for Japanese industry. And it has forcefully reasserted its claim to the Spratly and Paracel Islands and to sovereignty over virtually the entire South China Sea.

As the Chinese leaders’ history lesson will have told them, the relationship that determines whether the world is at peace or at war is that between pairs of great powers. Sometimes, as with Britain and America, it goes well. Sometimes, as between Britain and Germany, it does not.

So far, things have gone remarkably well between America and China. While China has devoted itself to economic growth, American security has focused on
Islamic terrorism and war in Iraq and Afghanistan. But the two mistrust each other. China sees America as a waning power that will eventually seek to block its own rise. And America worries about how Chinese nationalism, fuelled by rediscovered economic and military might, will express itself.

The Peloponnesian pessimists
Pessimists believe China and America are condemned to be rivals. The countries’ visions of the good society are very different. And, as China’s power grows, so will its determination to get its way and to do things in the world. America, by contrast, will inevitably balk at surrendering its pre-eminence.

They are probably right about Chinese ambitions. Yet China need not be an enemy. Unlike the Soviet Union, it is no longer in the business of exporting its ideology. Unlike the 19th-century European powers, it is not looking to amass new colonies. And China and America have a lot in common. Both benefit from globalisation and from open markets where they buy raw materials and sell their exports. Both want a broadly stable world in which nuclear weapons do not spread and rogue states, like Iran and North Korea, have little scope to cause mayhem. Both would lose incalculably from war.

The best way to turn China into an opponent is to treat it as one. The danger is that spats and rows will sour relations between China and America, just as the friendship between Germany and Britain crumbled in the decades before the first world war. It is already happening in defence. Feeling threatened by American naval power, China has been modernising its missiles, submarines, radar, cyber-warfare and anti-satellite weapons. Now America feels on its mettle. Recent Pentagon assessments of China’s military strength warn of the threat to Taiwan and American bases and to aircraft-carriers near the Chinese coast. The US Navy has begun to deploy more forces in the Pacific. Feeling threatened anew, China may respond. Even if neither America nor China intended harm—if they wanted only to ensure their own security—each could nevertheless see the other as a growing threat.

Some would say the solution is for America to turn its back on military rivalry. But a weaker America would lead to chronic insecurity in East Asia and thus threaten the peaceful conduct of trade and commerce on which America’s prosperity depends. America therefore needs to be strong enough to guarantee the seas and protect Taiwan from Chinese attack.

How to take down the Great Wall
History shows that superpowers can coexist peacefully when the rising power believes it can rise unhindered and the incumbent power believes that the way it runs the world is not fundamentally threatened. So a military build-up needs to be accompanied by a build-up of trust.

There are lots of ways to build trust in Asia. One would be to help ensure that disputes and misunderstandings do not get out of hand. China should thus be more open about its military doctrine—about its nuclear posture, its aircraft-carriers and missile programme. Likewise, America and China need rules for disputes including North Korea, Taiwan, space and cyber-warfare. And Asia as a whole needs agreements to help prevent every collision at sea from becoming a trial of strength.

America and China should try to work multilaterally. Instead of today’s confusion of competing venues, Asia needs a single regional security forum, such as the East Asia Summit, where it can do business. Asian countries could also collaborate more in confidence-boosting non-traditional security, such as health, environmental protection, anti-piracy and counter-terrorism, where threats by their nature cross borders.

If America wants to bind China into the rules-based liberal order it promotes, it needs to stick to the rules itself. Every time America breaks them—by, for instance, protectionism—it feeds China’s suspicions and undermines the very order it seeks.
China and America have one advantage over history’s great-power pairings: they saw the 20th century go disastrously wrong. It is up to them to ensure that the 21st is different.