Economist里面的GRE单词

whinnyUID: 189834

Hong Kong and Macau
No politics, pleaseMar 19th 2009 | HONG KONG
From The Economist print edition
Macau sails through a test Hong Kong flunked in 2003
MANY people visit Macau in search of sinful things to do. The tiny city next door to Hong Kong is Asia’s capital of gambling and decadent fun. However, Johannes Chan, dean of the University of Hong Kong’s law faculty, visiting for a far more austere purpose, found the self-governing Chinese enclave less than hospitable. On February 27th he took the one-hour hydrofoil ride to give a lecture at a university. But he was turned away on arrival, when an immigration official found his name on a list of banned visitors. Mr Chan is not alone. In the past year Macau has denied entry to several other potentially bothersome visitors from Hong Kong, including a pro-Tibet student activist, a press photographer and members of its Legislative Council.
Disturbed by what looks like politically motivated discrimination, 33 pro-democracy Hong Kong legislators and activists crossed the sea on March 15th to force a showdown. The Macau authorities promptly put five of them on a return ferry, citing internal-security reasons. The others were allowed to deliver a letter of protest to the Macau government.

This failed to mollify Macau’s critics. Under pressure from its own legislators, Hong Kong’s government has conveyed “concern” to Macau’s. For its part, Macau says it values exchanges with Hong Kong but reserves the right to deny entry to anyone. Lau Nai-keung, a Hong Kong member of China’s National People’s Congress, adds that because of Macau’s reliance on tourism, its low tolerance for troublemakers is understandable.
One reason for Macau’s jitters about any hint of unrest may be economic. The downturn has reduced tourist arrivals. Throughout 2008 Macau also saw waves of lay-offs, as casino developers struggled with a cash squeeze. The government is worried about labour discontent. Two years ago, on May Day, local residents staged violent protests against the gaming industry’s employment of foreigners. Indeed, one of the Hong Kong legislators turned away on March 15th is general secretary of an umbrella union group.

Politics, however, seems the bigger issue. Mr Chan suspects that Macau blacklisted him for his role in a group in Hong Kong that in 2003 lobbied against a national-security law, which the government in Beijing wanted Hong Kong to adopt. Many thought the sweeping but vague language banning sedition in the so-called “Article 23” legislation a threat to Hong Kong’s open society. Huge street protests forced the government to shelve it indefinitely. But just two days before Mr Chan’s trip, Macau passed its own version of the law, without a peep from its less-politicised public.
Pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong fear Macau’s tighter border controls reflect the new post-Article 23 reality. Worse, they see a glimpse of Hong Kong’s repressive future, should the government make a renewed push to pass the legislation and succeed. China’s role in the brouhaha, if any, is unclear. It no doubt considers Macau an obedient child. But if its zeal to please its parent antagonises its bigger sibling, even China may be unhappy. For now, people of all political leanings are urging Macau and Hong Kong to patch things up on their own.

whinnyUID: 189834

我是觉得上篇文章插图太可爱了。

阿秦UID: 2619567

发现很多是T的

whinnyUID: 189834

同感。

whinnyUID: 189834

同感。

whinnyUID: 189834

发一篇foreign policy上的看看

Medvedev Makes His Move

By Ethan Burger and Mary Holland

Posted March 2009

Dmitry Medvedev has been president of Russia for almost a year. Is he now planning to take power?

When Vladimir Putin stepped down as president of Russia last May, he left little to chance. Just as his predecessor Boris Yeltsin had anointed him, Putin made sure that his loyal protégé of 20 years, Dmitry Medvedev, would take his place. Putin took the helm of the country's dominant political party, United Russia, and then, as prime minister, expanded that position far beyond what the Constitution envisions. Although Putin rearranged the musical chairs, he continued to call the tune. Until now.
So long as Russia's oil-fueled prosperity soared, people accepted Putin's implicit bargain: government corruption and constricted civil rights in exchange for rising living standards. But today, with Russia's economy in shambles, this social contract is fraying. Ordinary Russians are already taking to the streets demanding the type of change Putin is unlikely to deliver. He epitomizes the KGB old guard who got Russia into this mess. Sooner or later, he will become the Russian financial crash's most prominent victim.
Medvedev, a lawyer by training and instinct, offers perhaps the only realistic hope of turning Russia around, but he can't operate freely while Putin is still effectively in charge. Seemingly aware of this, Medvedev has, in recent weeks, taken steps to distance himself from his mentor and might be setting the stage to force him out of government.
When Medvedev became president in May 2008, the world economic situation seemed stable. Oil was more than $140 a barrel and Russian political leaders were riding high. With living standards rising for most Russians, political elites enjoyed the luxury of not having to make hard choices.
By late 2008, though, the global financial crisis was in full swing. The Russian leadership was slow to grasp it, blaming the West for its profligacy and suggesting that Russia would be immune. Soon, however, the country experienced a triple shock: oil dipped below $40 a barrel, demand for Russian exports sank precipitously, and Western financial institutions began calling in their loans.
By February 2009, the ruble had depreciated to 36 rubles to the dollar, illustrating the ongoing loss of faith in the Russian economy. As a result, the cost of dollar-denominated imports increased substantially. The official unemployment rate hit 8.1 percent, and most observers project further increases in the near term. Not surprisingly, public approval of the country's political leadership fell. Although public opinion polls do not yet show massive discontent or unrest, they do show a pronounced downward shift.

Medvedev has always styled himself as something of a reformer. As the crisis has worsened, the president has been especially careful to distance himself from Putin. Policy differences between the two men -- on the response to the financial crisis, the locus of prosecutorial power, the use of force against protesters, the tenure of judges in the courts, and the definition of treason, among others -- are serious and growing.
The stylistic gap is also expanding. Medvedev has made official statements on the assassinations of human rights advocates Anna Politkovskaya, Stanislav Markelov, and Anastasia Baburova that differ markedly in tone and substance from Putin's responses. Medvedev strikes a different, less nationalistic, and more tolerant tone than Putin on questions of Islam and national security.
These differences are fundamental to each man's character. Putin, after all, is the product of the KGB, the government-sanctioned plutocracy, and the Cold War. Medvedev is the son of the Russian intelligentsia, the legal academy, and the post-Soviet world of global integration and opportunity. Although they have worked closely together for 20 years, they are quite different, and in the context of a political rivalry, have different constituencies.
Russians have noticed the widening split. In February, the weekly business publication Kommersant-Vlast printed a collection of opinions titled "Will Medvedev Sack Putin? Is It Time for Prime Minister Putin to Answer for Results of Anti-Crisis Efforts?" Although the discussion does not provide a definitive answer, simply posing the question is provocative in a country where the government has muzzled the press for years. Meanwhile, Medvedev's popularity is growing. According to a February 2009 national survey, 73 percent of those polled said they trust him, compared with 56 percent in 2006. Although it is impossible to predict what will happen, one thing is certain: The current power dynamic is shifting, and shifting fast. If the trend continues, Medvedev will undoubtedly begin asking himself why he is still playing second fiddle.
Of course, it's one thing to make soothing reformist noises; capitalizing on the resulting public accolades is quite another. The prime minister is undoubtedly a cunning adversary, but he does have vulnerabilities. For instance, Medvedev could be laying the groundwork for a move against Putin by making his war on "legal nihilism" and corruption the centerpiece of his domestic policy. In May 2008, he started a campaign to create new laws and structures against corruption. This is nothing new, every Russian leader publicly reviles corruption while doing little or nothing to check it, if not in fact reveling in it.

In the Putin era, though, the scale of corruption has mushroomed without any real oversight from law enforcement, the legislature, the media, or civil society. What's more, the prime minister and his closest allies are implicated. Stanislav Belkovsky, the Russian political analyst and insider, gave sensational interviews in November 2007 to Die Welt and The Guardian, stating that Putin was worth approximately $40 billion. He said Putin was the beneficial owner of 37 percent of Surgutneftegaz ($18 billion), 4.5 percent of Gazprom ($13 billion), and half of a Swiss-based oil-trading company Gunvor ($10 billion), run by a former St. Petersburg KGB agent. If true, this fortune would make Putin one of the richest people in Europe and probably the world. It would also make him one of the most corrupt. While in good economic times most Russians were content to look the other way, in these bad times, they may demand more accountability.
So for Medvedev, the new anticorruption law, which he shepherded through the Duma in December 2008, presents a potential opportunity to intimidate Putin and his supporters. The legislation prohibits conflicts of interest, requires government workers to report income and property, and mandates them to report on coworker noncompliance. It is tailor-made for a behind-the-scenes assault on Putin's power and legitimacy. Most of Putin's friends and allies throughout government and major corporations would no doubt find it challenging to provide full asset disclosure and transparency about conflicts of interest. With a new anticorruption law in his arsenal, Medvedev has a weapon of choice.
Although legislators attempted to water down certain provisions and postpone the law's taking force, Medvedev prevented substantive changes to the legislation. Medvedev's visible, personal involvement in this anticorruption effort suggests that it may be different from past shams.
On the personnel front, Medvedev is also distinguishing himself from Putin, appointing 1,000 new top managers to fill key government positions. This recruitment drive, announced last summer, is a response to the difficulties the state is facing in identifying and recruiting competent personnel for public service. It also highlights the lack of a proper recruitment system for government posts and the need for a new generation of managers to replace the Soviet era nomenklatura.
Notably, Medvedev has reached out to communists, nationalists, and liberals alike to create the pool of potential applicants rather than giving preference to United Russia. Although some of the "Golden 1,000" were prominent during Putin's presidency, the list does not appear to contain close Putin advisors. With these appointments, Medvedev is placing himself at the vanguard of a generational shift in Russia's political leadership.

Interestingly, Putin may have sealed his own fate years ago by establishing a legal precedent for his own ouster. Shortly after Yeltsin transferred temporary presidential responsibilities to Putin on December 31, 1999, Putin issued Presidential Decree 1763, granting Yeltsin and his family lifelong immunity from criminal prosecution, administrative sanction, arrest, detention, and interrogation. If push comes to shove, it's not far-fetched to imagine Medvedev offering the very same arrangement to Putin.
If the two leaders cannot work out a quiet deal, then Medvedev might decide to use the new anticorruption law against a proxy. He would likely choose someone reasonably close to Putin with a similar KGB or law enforcement background: in Russian parlance, a silovik. The government would prosecute a current or former official for failure to disclose accurate income and asset statements, report subordinate noncompliance, or identify conflicts of interest. Once the government started such a prosecution for corruption, the message to Putin supporters would be clear: Watch out or you could be next.
Why would Medvedev turn on his political godfather? For political survival for the government, himself, and even Putin. Unless there is some fall guy for Russia's economic fiasco, the whole regime could topple. Counting on Russians' weariness with tumult and revolution, Medvedev may hope that dumping Putin will be enough to keep the system intact.
The time is close when Medvedev is likely to offer Putin a deal he can't refuse. This true power shift, unlike the symbolic one last May, might be Russia's best hope to navigate peacefully its deepening economic and political crisis.



Ethan Burger is adjunct professor at Georgetown University Law Center.
Mary Holland is director of the graduate legal skills program at New York University School of Law. Both have closely followed developments in Russia for more than 20 years.
读完感觉写的都是些众所周知的内容
我觉得，我们是不是自己读完后写点comment才算有吸收？

GenevUID: 2543794

31# whinny
Many thought the sweeping but vague language banning sedition in the so-called “Article 23” legislation a threat to Hong Kong’s open society.

sweeping
adj.
Having wide-ranging influence or effect:
全面的影响和作用广泛的：
sweeping changes.
影响广泛的变化
Moving in or as if in a wide curve:
大弧度的大幅度弧线形运动或象此运动的：
a sweeping gesture; a sweeping glance.
做大幅度挥手动作；环视
Indiscriminate; wholesale:
不分青红皂白的；一扫无遗的：
sweeping generalizations.
不加区别的概括
Overwhelming; complete:
势不可挡的；彻底的：
a sweeping victory.
彻底胜利

It no doubt considers Macau an obedient child. But if its zeal to please its parent antagonises its bigger sibling, even China may be unhappy.
这个比喻老幽默了，香港是大儿子，澳门小儿子。台湾呢？被山姆大叔拐走的情人？

whinnyUID: 189834

37# Genev

有人一起读读就是感觉好啊。感觉不到孤独

whinnyUID: 189834

收到加分的短信，对我来说是一种鼓舞。

读个小短篇今天。
Dinosaurs
Our feathered friendsMar 19th 2009
From The Economist print edition
Some say that birds are dinosaurs. The truth may be that dinosaurs are birds
THAT birds are the descendants of dinosaurs is now accepted by almost all evolutionary biologists. The clinching discovery was of animals that were clearly dinosaurs, and clearly could not fly, but which had feathers. That did raise the question, though, of why one twig of the great dinosaur tree had developed such strange outer vestments, even before it developed wings.
If a discovery announced in this week’s Nature has been interpreted correctly, that question is about to get even stranger. For Zheng Xiaoting of the Shandong Tianyu Museum of Nature in Pingyi, China, and her colleagues, are suggesting that it was not just the part of the clan that led to birds that was feathered. What they have found makes it likely that many dinosaurs had something rather like feathers, and that those which did not had lost a primitive characteristic of the group in the way that elephants and hippos have lost most of the hair that is characteristic of mammals.

The crucial discovery comes from a famous fossil bed in Liaoning province. Dr Zheng and her colleagues propose to call it Tianyulong confuciusi. The new species belongs to a group of dinosaurs called the Ornithischia. This group, which includes such famous names as Stegosaurus and Triceratops, is one of the two clades into which the dinosaurs are divided. The other is the Saurischia, whose famous members include Diplodocus and Tyrannosaurus. The Saurischia also include all the immediate ancestors of birds. Which is why Dr Zheng was stunned to find on Tianyulong confuciusi what are conservatively described in her paper as “long, singular and unbranched filamentous integumentary structures”. In other words, things than look suspiciously like the central shafts of feathers.

Such “protofeathers” have been found on other dinosaurs, but until now those species have, like those that sport true feathers, all belonged to a part of the Saurischia that includes the birds. Yet the split between Ornithischia and Saurischia goes back to the very beginning of the dinosaurs, 80m years before the first birds and about 100m years before T. confuciusi. So if the feather-like structures of T. confuciusi really have the same origin as feathers, then such structures must have been there from the outset, and be characteristic of dinosaurs as a whole.
Jurassic larkThat does not explain what they were for. A few researchers argue that they were actually internal to the skin, and thus not related to feathers at all. If they really were external, the most likely answer is that they served the same function—insulation—as hair does on a mammal. But they may, like hair and modern feathers, have had a secondary, signalling function.
This discovery raises another question, too. Taxonomically, the very definition of a bird was until recently an animal that has feathers. Now, taxonomists argue that since birds are descended from dinosaurs they should be classified merely as a subgroup of the Dinosauria. But if feathers truly are the diagnostic criterion, then perhaps things should be the other way round, and Stegosaurus, Triceratops, Diplodocus, Tyrannosaurus and their kin should no longer be thought of as terrible lizards, but as overweight, flightless birds.

第一个生词不是很懂，CLINCHING，不懂。然学了些新的概念，比如这个 分类学，今天是第一回碰到，寡闻了。

whinnyUID: 189834

第一回用ISSUE练习词汇。感觉文章有点八股。不过可能就是这样吧。
Issue 1
"We can usually learn much more from people whose views we share than from people whose
views contradict our own."; disagreement can cause stress and inhibit learning."

Do we learn more from people whose ideas we share in common than from those whose
ideas contradict ours? The speaker daims so, for the reason that disagreement can cause
stress and inhibit learning. I concede that undue discord can impede learning. Otherwise, in
my view we learn far more from discourse and debate（这样的重复是AW的必须吧？？？） with those whose ideas we oppose than from people whose ideas are in accord with our own.
INHIBIT跟IMPEDE都是阻碍的意思吧？
Admittedly, under some circumstances disagreement with others can be counterproductive
to learning. For supporting examples one need look no further than a television set. On today's typical television or radio talk show, disagreement usually manifests itself in meaningless
rhetorical bouts（: a spell of activity: as a: an athletic match as of boxing) and shouting matches, during which opponents vie（COMPETE） to have their own message
heard, but have little interest either in finding common ground with or in acknowledging the
merits of the opponent's viewpoint. Understandably, neither the combatants nor the viewers
learn anything meaningful. In fact, these battles only serve to reinforce th

GenevUID: 2543794

39# whinny

The clinching discovery was of animals that were clearly dinosaurs, and clearly could not fly, but which had feathers.

盖棺定论的发现是......

clinch
v.intr.
To be held together securely.
敲弯，钉牢牢牢地固定在一起
Sports
【体育运动】
To hold a boxing opponent's body with one or both arms to prevent or hinder his punches.
扭住对手用一只或两只胳膊扭住拳击对手的身体防止或阻碍其用拳击打
Slang
【俚语】
To embrace amorously.
拥抱热情地抱住

whinnyUID: 189834

今天工作事多，没有看什么材料。
Issue 2
"No field of study can advance significantly unless outsiders bring their knowledge and experience to that field of study."

I strongly agree with the assertion that significant advances in knowledge require expertise from various fields. The world around us presents a seamless web of physical and anthropogenic forces, which interact in ways that can be understood only in the context of a variety of disciplines. Two examples that aptly illustrate this point involve the fields of cultural anthropology and astronomy.
SEAM: the joining of two pieces (as of cloth or leather) by sewing usually near the edge b: the stitching used in such a joining
Consider how a cultural anthropologist's knowledge about an ancient civilization is enhanced not only by the expertise of the archeologist--who unearths the evidence--but ultimately by the expertise of biochemists, geologists, linguists, and even astronomers. By analyzing the hair, nails, blood and bones of mummified bodies, biochemists and forensic scientists can determine the life expectancy, general well-being, and common causes of death of the population. These experts can also ensure the proper preservation of evidence found at the archeological site. A geologist can help identify the source and age of the materials used for tools, weapons, and structures--thereby enabling the anthropologist to extrapolate about the civilization's economy, trades and work habits, life styles, extent of travel and mobility, and so forth. Linguists are needed to interpret hieroglyphics and extrapolate from found fragments of writings. And an astronomer can help explain the layout of an ancient city as well as the design, structure and position of monuments, tombs, and temples--since ancients often looked to the stars for guidance in building cities and structures.
An even more striking example of how expertise in diverse fields is needed to advance knowledge involves the area of astronomy and space exploration. Significant advancements in our knowledge of the solar system and the universe require increasingly keen tools for observation and measurement. Telescope technology and the measurement of celestial distances, masses, volumes, and so forth, are the domain of astrophysicists.

Assertion 1: to state or declare positively and often forcefully or aggressively
forensic
1
: belonging to, used in, or suitable to courts of judicature or to public discussion and debate
2
:
relating to or dealing with the application of scientific knowledge to legal problems
extrapolate: : to infer (values of a variable in an unobserved interval) from values within an already observed interval
These advances also require increasingly sophisticated means of exploration. Manned and unmanned exploratory probes are designed by mechanical, electrical, and computer engineers. And to build and enable these technologies requires the acumen and savvy of business leaders, managers, and politicians. Even diplomats might play a role--insofar as major space projects require intemafional cooperative efforts among the world's scientists and governments. And ultimately it is our philosophers whose expertise helps provide meaning to what we learn about our universe.

ACUMEN : keenness and depth of perception, discernment, or discrimination especially in practical matters
SAVVY: UNDERSTAND
In sum, no area ofinteUectual inquiry operates in a vacuum. Because the sciences are inextricably related, to advance our knowledge in any one area we must understand the interplay among them all. Moreover, it is our non-scienfists who make possible the science, and who bring meaning to what we learn from it.
INEXTRICABLY:
1: forming a maze or tangle from which it is impossible to get free
INTERPLAY:相互作用

whinnyUID: 189834

Obama Issues Ultimatum to Struggling Automakers

SHERYL GAY STOLBERG and BILL VLASIC

Published: March 30, 2009

WASHINGTON — President Obama delivered an ultimatum to General Motors and Chrysler on Monday, telling them to adopt radical changes in short order or face bankruptcy — a move that came after a series of somber discussions in which he concluded that a controlled bankruptcy might be the best way to reorganize the two ailing auto giants.
In the end, the president decided to throw the companies a short lifeline. He gave G.M. 60 days and Chrysler one month to avert bankruptcy and restructure on their own.
But during that period, Mr. Obama warned on Monday, the automakers will have to radically reshape their businesses in a way that experts say will severely shrink them.
For G.M., the president’s decision means not only the loss of its chief executive, Rick Wagoner, who was forced out as part of the deal, but also some tough negotiations with the United Automobile Workers and bondholders, who have thus far balked at the company’s demands.
Now the union will be asked to make even bigger concessions on a new wage and benefits contract and health benefits for retirees. The bondholders will most likely be forced to accept a deep discount on the price of their debt as well as agree to take G.M. stock in lieu of debt repayments.
Chrysler, meanwhile, must hurry up a merger deal with the Italian automaker Fiat.
The Obama administration has concluded that Chrysler is not viable as a stand-alone company, and is giving the automaker until April 30 to complete the Fiat merger or face a cutoff of taxpayer help.
If the merger is successful, the administration will consider giving Chrysler $6 billion in additional taxpayer aid.
Mr. Obama decided early on that simply letting the companies fail was not an option, advisers said. But faced with what one senior official called “no good options,” the president struggled to reconcile his conclusion that G.M. and Chrysler were not viable with his determination to save an industry that he called “an emblem of the American spirit.”
“Year after year, decade after decade, we’ve seen problems papered over and tough choices kicked down the road, even as foreign competitors outpaced us,” Mr. Obama said in announcing his decision at the White House. “Well, we have reached the end of that road.”
While Michigan lawmakers privately balked at the president’s decision to cite bankruptcy, they said that by raising the specter of bankruptcy for the two companies, Mr. Obama might have made it easier for both to win concessions.
“They hopefully will see that they have a pretty stark choice in terms of working something out,” said Senator Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat, who learned of the plan Sunday night when the president called him and other Michigan lawmakers from the Oval Office. “Their option is either to take a haircut or a bath.”
Indeed, on Monday, Fiat’s chief executive released a statement indicating he was eager to forge an alliance with Chrysler.
“It’s really about keeping the pressure on the parties, and the government’s doing a good job of that,” said Van Conway, a partner with Conway MacKenzie & Dunleavy, a turnaround consulting firm in Birmingham, Mich. “Most of the time when you go into bankruptcy court, your deal gets a lot worse. As unfair as it is to take any concession in business, you’ve got to take the best alternative you’re given in a situation.”
The United Auto Workers did not respond to several requests for comment on Monday.
The talk of bankruptcy rattled the overall stock market. The Dow Jones industrial average declined 254.16 points, or 3.27 percent, to close at 7,522.02. G.M.’s shares also took a beating, closing down 92 cents at $2.70.
Throughout his bid for the presidency, Mr. Obama talked in stern tones about how the nation’s auto industry needed to improve its ways if it was to survive. His statement from the White House on Monday — an aggressive move, particularly from a Democratic president, to force the industry to revamp itself or lose government aid — represented an extraordinary moment in American manufacturing history, and another weighty moment in a presidency that has been filled with them.
The internal debate that led to the announcement culminated in two back-to-back 45-minute sessions in the Oval Office last Thursday. Members of Mr. Obama’s auto task force, led by two former investment bankers, Steven Rattner and Ronald Bloom, presented the president with what one senior administration official called “an incredibly difficult and painful set of decisions.”
Perhaps the thorniest was the question of bankruptcy. Like his predecessor, former President George W. Bush, Mr. Obama felt that a chaotic bankruptcy would be disastrous for the companies and the broader economy.
But the task force was considering another idea: the prospect of using what the administration official called “the quick, surgical legal tools that exist in our bankruptcy code” to restructure the companies in a clean and efficient way. The problem was whether to confront that possibility head on, and how to explain it to a public that is spooked by the mention of the word bankruptcy.
After debating the ramifications and risks, Mr. Obama concluded he had to put the bankruptcy option on the table and discuss it, as he did Monday.
“What I’m not talking about is a process where a company is simply broken up, sold off and no longer exists,” Mr. Obama said. “We’re not talking about that. And what I’m not talking about is a company that’s stuck in court for years.”
But Michigan lawmakers were deeply skeptical when Mr. Obama telephoned them Sunday evening from the Oval Office to disclose his plans.
Representative John D. Dingell, the Michigan Democrat who is the longest-serving member of the House, warned the president that bankruptcy was “like a war or marriage; it’s easy to get into, hard to get out of,” according to one participant in the discussion.
At the Oval Office session, Mr. Obama also weighed another move that did not sit well with the Michigan delegation — the decision to push Mr. Wagoner, the G.M. chief executive, into involuntary retirement.
Senator Levin said the lawmakers, while saddened, did not challenge the president.
“He had made the decision that this kind of change was necessary to kind of signal to the public that there was going to be a real effort to make a fresh start,” Mr. Levin said. “There wasn’t much point in arguing whether or not it was fair or unfair, wise or unwise. It was a decision that he didn’t ask us about, he informed us of.”
Mr. Wagoner will not receive a severance payment but instead will get a pension and other benefits worth about $23 million, to be paid in installments over the rest of his life, according to Equilar, a compensation consulting firm.
Sheryl Gay Stolberg reported from Washington and Bill Vlasic from Detroit.

GenevUID: 2543794

楼上的文章标题 Ultimatum - 哀的美敦书 最后通牒

The streets of Lhasa, Tibet's capital, have been bedecked with floral displays.

Official media are replete with stories of happy Tibetans. Pride of place goes to a diorama showing former serfs merrily chucking “feudal documents” into a crackling fire.

handing out aristocratic and monastic land to farmers and nomads.

the government is waging offensives on all fronts.

Access to it has been blocked in China since shortly after the Tibetan government-in-exile released video (see the image above) purporting to show Tibetan protesters being beaten by Chinese police. No such slur is permitted in Beijing. Officials say that the images and voices in the video were pieced together from a variety of sources, and thus it is “a lie”.

gdreamer9UID: 2542678

不是经济师里面的文章，在网上看到一个关于FACEBOOK的文章挺有意思有帖上来了呵呵～LZ MM别见怪哈～

Facebook’s dilemma after two years of record growth is how to grow the next 175 million users. Where are they? Easy answer is China. Sure there’s Europe also. But that’s 20 languages and Facebook already seems to be making headway into places like the UK. But China remains the elusive prize.

Five years, $500 million invested in it and 175 million registered users later does Facebook have growth questions? Yes, size matters on the Web where attention spans for friend networks last about as long as the buzz from a Red Bull soft drink. After all, anyone remember Friendster, the first mega social net? How about Ryze? Six Degrees? Even MySpace has lost its edge.

On the Web with no real emotional connection these networks become like flavors of cola. Coke, Pepsi, RC, or the Chinese made Future Cola.这个指的是中国的非常可乐把 Cola seems to taste the same, social networks seem to be similar. Buzz means growth.

A few months ago Facebook reportedly saw smallish Twitter (3 million reported users) as a growth tool and offered to buy it for $500 million. Twitter turned it down, reminiscent  of Facebook spurning offers from Yahoo and others of over $1 billion just over a year ago.

In the U.S. Facebook is the 4th most used website now. College students, professionals, educators and brands all invaded the service 这个词用到好诙谐，感觉大家迫不及待的用FACEBOOK 哈哈a little over a year ago when Facebook opened its doors beyond the initial college user base. Suddenly your mother in law is your friend on Facebook, which is actually kind of bizarre in many ways.这个更逗。。要是我的FACEBOOK上有我朋友的岳母我能笑死^_^

The secret to Facebook’s exponential growth has been opening up and also turning itself from a service into a platform via its API 这个是什么？API还是不太明白，接口？. Through the Facebook API thousands of third-party developers built applications (and businesses) on Facebook. Example, Slide.com, Rockyou, and many more.

What Facebook did correctly was realize that nobody had a social network platform, that the key to success with a Web-based company is not just the user base but giving outside developers the keys to create businesses on the platform.

Apple is doing the same thing with iPhone (and did it earlier than Facebook). What Apple and Facebook learned is that Microsoft became the dominant PC operating system not from the operating system but by allowing third-party developers to write applications that used the Microsoft OS as the foundation. 这个说法很有意思 32 years later and Microsoft still owns the PC platform.

Do you think Bill Gates was thinking of global domination here: 哈哈哈这个也很有意思，在这个照片里GATES 好孱弱哈哈，然后作者就来一把讽刺


The race for the ’social network operating system’ (snos) is on.  Microsoft owns a small piece of Facebook, though not much. But if it was smart it probably negotiated for first right to acquire Facebook before anyone else can. Now may be a good time, in the last year Facebook’s valuation for common stock reportedly has dropped from $15 billion to $3.76 billion. $5 billion and Microsoft owns it.

In terms of winners you could call Facebook champion. After all, it would really have to screw things up to lose its position. Facebook also just turned its user profiles into “streaming” updates so that users can answer “what’s on your mind?” as they login, basically stealing Twitter’s thunder and growth curve in one swoop (ok, don’t accept our $500 million, we’ll just copy it and deploy it into our user base which is 50x larger).

Facebook is the largest photo sharing site in the U.S. with more than 4 billion photos uploaded.

But it would be a mistake to believe that Facebook will win the war. The battle? yes, this first one. But across the world many social networks have established themselves and built larger native user bases that Facebook will find hard to dislodge. Sort of like the image of Britney Spears OBGYN exit from the limo will be hard to purge from memory. An entire generation lost in one image.

Facebook has been smart in several ways, though, that many may not have noticed. Consider that China billionaire Li Ka-shing invested $100 million. And rumor has it that Facebook has been sending small envoys into China to try and figure out how to become the largest social net in China.

30% of Facebook users are in the U.S., followed next by the UK with 7% of its users. Chinese Facebook users account for only 2% of its users or under 4 million people — that’s small in a country with the largest Internet user base in the world with 300 million users, 70% of them on broadband connections.

So Facebook has its work cut out for it in many spots around the globe where it must grow now that 1 in 4 U.S. Internet users is on Facebook. Growth from here is almost ALL international.

Which is why in China a homespun company, Xiaonei,是CHINAREN吗？ with about 40 million registered users is the leader there. 87% of Xiaonei users are in China and 2% are from the U.S., which is an exact mirror of Facebook’s Chinese user base of 2%.

Most Americans have never heard of Xiaonei and probably never will, although it’s raised more than $430 million from Oak Pacific Partners (which is  backed by U.S., Chinese and Japanese investors).  Investors mean nothing if the fickle users go elsewhere, to the new “new thing”. As the masses invade Facebook it’s coolness factor drops dramatically .



Remember that today’s Facebook can be tomorrow’s Friendster, popular but fleeting. That’s the power of the Web and appeal for entrepreneurs, the evolution is never-ending. Facebook’s goal of being the SNOS may turn out more like the dog treat: Snausages.