决战1010精英组Economist阅读汇——missingqiqi分贴

missingqiqiUID: 2688720

                   电梯

1.Network effects 网络技术对传统出版的影响       （aw新旧技术，传统和现在，传统对现在影响）
    https://bbs.gter.net/forum.php?mod=viewthread&tid=1081596&page=1#pid1773816022
2.The trouble with nuclear fuel aw发展高科技——核燃料的不利影响）
   https://bbs.gter.net/forum.php?mod=viewthread&tid=1081596&page=1#pid1773816022
3.The open society   节选       (aw 国家信息化公开)                     
   https://bbs.gter.net/forum.php?mod=viewthread&tid=1081596&page=1#pid1773819933

4.The economist debate   ：women    女性地位和机会历史和今日的对比           
   https://bbs.gter.net/forum.php?mod=viewthread&tid=1081596&page=1#pid1773843307

5.The paperless library 无纸化图书馆
    https://bbs.gter.net/forum.php?mod=viewthread&tid=1081596&page=1#pid1773843314

missingqiqiUID: 2688720

Network effects   （aw新旧技术，传统和现在，传统对现在影响）
Dec 17th 2009
From The Economist print edition

How a new communications technology disrupted America’s newspaper industry—in 1845
1845年，新通信技术咄咄逼人，美国报业阵脚大乱   


好词（包括GRE）  好句   好观点

CHANGE is in the air. A new communications technology threatens a dramatic upheaval（动乱,大变动） in America’s newspaper industry, overturning the status quo(词组：社会现状) and disrupting(打破了) the business model that has served the industry for years. This “great revolution”, warns one editor, will mean that some publications “must submit to destiny, and go out of existence.”(让出版业听天由命，不复存在) With many American papers declaring bankruptcy(破产) in the past few months, their readers and advertisers lured（引诱） away by cheaper alternatives on the internet, this doom-laden prediction(绝望至极的预测) sounds familiar.But it was in fact made in May 1845, when the revolutionary technology of the day was not the internet—but the electric telegraph.（新技术不一定颠覆传统，就像当年的电报没有改变传统出版）

Today, papers are doing their best to co-opt the internet.(当代技术对传统的影响) They have launched(发行) online editions, set up blogs and encouraged dialogue with readers. Like the telegraph, the internet has changed the style of reporting and forced papers to be more timely(及时的) and accurate, and politicians to be more consistent. Again there is talk of news being commoditised(大宗商品化) and of the need to focus on analysis and opinion, or on a narrow subject area. And again there are predictions of the death of the newspaper, with hand-wringing(绝望，歇斯底里状态) about the implications for democracy if fewer publications exist to challenge those in authority(权利) or expose wrongdoing.

The internet may kill newspapers; but it is not clear if that matters. For society, what matters is that people should have access to news, not that it should be delivered through any particular medium; and, for the consumer, the faster it travels, the better(新技术能否取代传统的关键是新闻传播的速度). The telegraph hastened the speed at which news was disseminated. So does the internet. Those in the news business use the new technology at every stage of newsgathering and distribution（新闻收集和分发）. A move to electronic distribution—through PCs, mobile phones and e-readers—has started. It seems likely only to accelerate.

主要观点：
1.But it was in fact made in May 1845, when the revolutionary technology of the day was not the internet—but the electric telegraph.
  （新技术不一定颠覆传统，就像当年的电报没有改变传统出版）
2.Today, papers are doing their best to co-opt the internet.(当代技术对传统出版的影响，有网上版本，开博客。。。)
3. For society, what matters is that people should have access to news, not that it should be delivered through any particular medium; and, for the consumer, the faster it travels, the better.
    (新技术能否取代传统的关键是新闻传播的速度，利用先进技术加速传统出版业，比如电脑，互联网).




The trouble with nuclear fuel
核燃料之困（aw发展高科技——核燃料的不利影响）

Struggling to hold up a bank （节选）

Aug 6th 2009　From The Economist print edition

When narrow national interests obstruct a noble cause狭隘的国家利益阻碍了高尚事业



Rods that glow in the dark


PAVED it may be with good intentions, but there are many twists and pot-holes（曲折和阻碍） along the road to a nuclear-free world（无核世界）. So many, in fact, that the path, tantalisingly opened up by Barack Obama, may yet turn out to lead nowhere（可能尚无法实现）.

But to keep things minimally on track, governments that care about the spread of the bomb will make a big effort to shore up the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) （核不扩散条约）at next year’s five-yearly review. The Obama administration, unlike its predecessor, talks of ratifying the test-ban treaty. America and Russia are busy cutting warheads.

Yet all will be in vain unless better ways can be found to deal with a practical problem as old as the nuclear age: how to stop nuclear technologies that can be used legitimately for making electricity from being abused for bomb-making.( 实际问题是如何阻止可合法用于发电的核技术被滥用于制造核武)Efforts to tackle it are in a muddle（混乱状态，毫无头绪）.

Sheer numbers are one problem. Governments from Asia and the Middle East to Africa and Latin America are queuing up to（排队去做） get into the nuclear business, though the financial crisis（经济危机） will probably stop some of them. Of those that press ahead, the worry is that（令人担心的是） not all will be looking merely for alternative ways to keep the lights on.(这句话意思不太懂。。应该是不仅仅是为了发电（light on）吧)

North Korea never tried hard to disguise（假扮，掩饰） its plans, and now doesn’t bother(打扰。这里应该是在乎): it claims to have tested two bombs in the past three years and to be building more. But Iran personifies a more insidious（阴险，诱人上当的） problem: that of separating civilian from military nuclear technology—and intentions.

Iran says its nuclear work is peaceful, and notes that the NPT promises access to civilian nuclear power for all who honour it (theoretically all countries save India, Israel and Pakistan which never signed, and North Korea which cheated and left). That includes sensitive nuclear technologies, says Iran, though the NPT doesn’t specify.

主要观点：核武器的发展总是打着民用的旗号，然而却是为了建造更多的核武器。主要是当今科技不能无限制自由发展，应该受到一定的限制和约束
              how to stop nuclear technologies that can be used legitimately for making electricity from being abused for bomb-making      
            

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The open society   节选       (aw 国家信息化公开)
Governments are letting in the light

Feb 25th 2010 | From The Economist print edition


America is in the lead on data access. On his first full day in office Barack Obama issued(发布) a presidential memorandum ordering the heads of federal agencies to make available as much information as possible, urging them to act “with a clear presumption: in the face of doubt, openness prevails（公开优先原则）”. This was all the more remarkable(不同寻常) since the Bush administration had explicitly instructed agencies to do the opposite.

All this has made a big difference. “There is a cultural change in what people expect from government, fuelled by the experience of shopping on the internet and having real-time(实时) access to financial information,” says John Wonderlich of the Sunlight Foundation, which promotes open government. The economic crisis has speeded up that change, particularly in state and city governments.

One obstacle is that most countries lack America’s open-government ethos, nurtured over decades by laws on ethics in government, transparency rules and the Freedom of Information act（尼克松信息自由法）, which acquired teeth after the Nixon years.

An obstacle of a different sort is Crown copyright, which means that most government data in Britain and the Commonwealth countries are the state’s property, constraining their use. In Britain postcodes and Ordnance Survey map data at present cannot be freely used for commercial purposes—a source of loud complaints from businesses and activists. But from later this year access to some parts of both data sets will be free, thanks to an initiative to bring more government services online.

The point of open information is not merely to expose the world but to change it. In recent years moves towards more transparency in government have become one of the most vibrant（生机勃勃） and promising areas of public policy. Sometimes information disclosure can achieve policy aims more effectively and at far lower cost than traditional regulation.

Mr Fung thinks that as governments release more and more information about the things they do, the data will be used to show the public sector’s shortcomings rather than to highlight its achievements. Another concern is that the accuracy and quality of the data will be found wanting (which is a problem for business as well as for the public sector). There is also a debate over whether governments should merely supply the raw data or get involved in processing and displaying them too. The concern is that they might manipulate them—but then so might anyone else.

主要观点：1.美国在数据透明化方面走在了世界的前列。  America is in the lead on data access.
              2.（信息公开化遇到的）一个障碍是大多数国家都缺少美国式公开政府的民族气质
                  One obstacle is that most countries lack America’s open-government ethos
                   另一个障碍是皇家版权（Crown copyright）。
                  An obstacle of a different sort is Crown copyright
              3.公开信息的目的并不仅仅是暴露世界存在的问题，而是去改变它。
                The point of open information is not merely to expose the world but to change it.
              4.政府可能会篡改数据

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The Economist Debate:
Woman
This house believes that women in the developed world have never had it so good.

The moderator's rebuttal remarks

This debate has got off to an excellent start(开门红): we thank our debaters and the many people who have contributed online. Now the debaters have laid out their starting propositions, the arguments are beginning to deepen, with serious questions asked about what success means and what it means to say that women have never had it so good.

Terry O'Neill rightly objects to the complacency implied by "never had it so good" (which is why, of course, Harold Macmillan's phrase became notorious in the first place). This complacency implies that women should call it a day rather than continue to agitate for a better deal.

反对观点一：She points out that even though women have lots more choices than they used to have, their choices are still more constrained than men's. They invest in their educations only to drop out of full-time work when they have children. They are granted a theoretical right to abortion only to see abortion clinics closed down.

反对观点二：She also points out that sexism is still more widespread than polite people recognise. Female political candidates are subjected to a level of personal scrutiny, some of it strikingly vitriolic(adj 尖酸刻薄的), that men do not have to endure（vt 忍受，忍耐）. I was shocked, in covering the last presidential campaign, about the sort of things that were said, in public and even more in private, about Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin(谈到了女性在总统竞选中的歧视).

Richard Donkin starts off by sticking closely to the terms of the motion. 支持观点一：He believes that there is no doubt that women in the developed world are better off now than they have ever been. But then—as if he were not already on dangerous enough ground as a man defending the notion—（出现一个让步观点）he raises the question of whether some feminists have defined success too narrowly. What about women who are more interested in motherhood than the economic rat race? 建议：His point is that women should not be prisoners of a calculus that has them constantly competing with men for quantitative equality: they need to stop for a moment, celebrate their achievements and then ask some deeper questions about where they want out of their lives.

So far the voting is going heavily in favour of（赞成） the proposition. But I would suggest that people ought to bear two things in mind before voting for the motion. The first is Ms O'Neill's point about self-satisfaction. "You've never had it so good" is not simply an objective description of historical change. It is also a suggestion that you should be happy with where you are. The second is that there is some evidence that women are not better off than they used to be. I have already mentioned that living standards have been stagnating. Several studies also suggest that people are no happier than they used to be. The fact that women have conflicting choices—particularly over whether they should find fulfilment in motherhood or careers—is creating a great deal of angst. And in trying to do both things many women are bearing a burden that their mothers were spared（一种现状）.

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China and the USThis house believes that China is showing more leadership than America in the fight against climate change

It is hard to improve on this statement of Christina Larson, from Foreign Policy, so I won't try: "China is paradoxically(adv.  似非而是地; 反常地; ) home to some of the blackest rivers and greenest ambitions on the planet, but it also has the world’s best and worst record on global warming."

When you hear people in the United States talk about China, you hear two different descriptions of the Middle Kingdom.
美国对中国的两种观点。
观点之一（反对）：One is the filthy polluter that will snatch（强夺，攫取） all of America's jobs as soon as America puts a cap (and thereby a price) on carbon.
观点之二（支持）： The other is of a country that is adding gigawatts of renewable power, like the recent announcement a huge windfarm in Inner Mongolia, with what looks like admirable determination.
看来老美还算是辩证。。。
The United States, long a land of paradoxes, can be described the same way. It has given over its claim to the title of world's biggest greenhouse-gas emitter, now China's dubious（可疑的；不可靠的） honour. But it is still the second-biggest emitter, and as a rich country has responsibility for much of the carbon dioxide already in the air. We must remember that it is the total CO2, not the annual emissions, that matter, since carbon dioxide takes hundreds of years to leave the atmosphere. And America has dragged its feet on legislation. The cap-and-trade bill in the Senate may now not see floor debate until spring, three months after what was supposed to be a treaty-writing conference in Copenhagen, which is now expected only to produce a political agreement.

But there are plenty of bright spots in America, too. Emissions peaked in 2005. States and companies are moving where the federal government has not. Many states already have renewable-energy portfolio(文件夹) mandates(命令). Texas recently hit a record high of 25% of its power produced by wind (albeit in the middle of the night). Most important, America remains a technical leader in a way that China is not（美国总是强调自己的伟大。。虽然自己做的不对。。）: if there is a breakout technology, it is still more likely to come from Silicon Valley（硅谷） than Shanghai.

So which country is really doing more to avert climate catastrophe? Of course the question isn't a clear zero-sum, either-or, since some developments will help both—and the rest of the world to boot. But both countries' emissions also contribute to what, remember, is global warming: greenhouse gases do not respect borders. Peggy Liu starts us off by pointing us to many eye-catching numbers relating to China's emissions, and Max Schulz does much the same, but with Chinese coal consumption. Since the debate is about whether China or America is doing more to show global leadership, I hope both participants will put some detail into how they see America's, not just China's, policies（感觉文章有很强的歧视性。。）.

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The paperless library 无纸化图书馆


Sep 22nd 2005 From The Economist print edition
Free access to scientific results is changing research practices
免费获取科研成果正在悄然改变研究方式

IT USED to be so straightforward(adj 成直线前进的；（表达、性格）诚实坦率的；直接而公开的). A team of researchers working together in the laboratory would submit the results of their research to a journal. A journal editor would then remove the authors' names and affiliations from the paper and send it to their peers for review. Depending on the comments received, the editor would accept the paper for publication or decline it. Copyright rested with the journal publisher, and researchers seeking knowledge of the results would have to subscribe to the journal.
过去，获得科研成果非常简洁单一。在实验室里，一个聚精会神进行科学研究的研究团队会将他们的研究成果递交给一份期刊。随后，期刊编辑会从论文中隐去作者姓名和其所在单位名称，传送给他的同行进行评阅。而后，该期刊编辑根据反馈回来的评论决定是否要发表此项科研成果。期刊拥有论文版权，如果其他想要查阅或引用该科研成果的研究人员需订阅这份期刊。
No longer. The internet—and pressure from funding agencies, who are questioning why commercial publishers are making money from government-funded research by restricting access to it—is making free access to scientific results a reality. This week, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) issued a report describing the far-reaching consequences of this. The report, by John Houghton of Victoria University in Australia and Graham Vickery of the OECD, makes heavy reading for publishers who have, so far, made handsome profits. But it goes further than that. It signals a change in what has, until now, been a key element of scientific endeavour.
不过，现在这一切都已成为历史。因特网正在促使免费获取科研成果变为现实，这其中还包括来自学术基金组织方面的压力。他们质疑商业出版商为什么能够通过限制政府资助的科研成果的获取权而从中渔利？本周，经济合作与发展组织发表了一份报告描述了免费获取科研成果而产生的深远影响。由澳大利亚维多利亚大学的约翰霍顿和经济合作与发展组织的格雷厄姆维克利联合撰写的报告，让那些到目前为止已经赚取了可观利润的出版商读起来感到忧心忡忡。并且，还不止这个。到目前为止，这将预示着科研事业中的一个关键性组成部分即将发生一次举足轻重的变革。
The value of knowledge and the return on the public investment in research depends, in part, upon wide distribution and ready access. It is big business. In America, the core scientific publishing market is estimated at between $7 billion and $11 billion. The International Association of Scientific, Technical and Medical Publishers says that there are more than 2,000 publishers worldwide specialising in these subjects. They publish more than 1.2m articles each year in some 16,000 journals.
对于科研成果和在研究上进行公共投资利润回报的评价部分取决期刊发行量的广度和是否有能够随手阅读的便利。这是一个大产业。在美国，核心科研成果发表市场市值估计在70亿和110亿美元之间。国际协会的科学，技术和医学出版商指出，全球有超过2000家出版商主营这些业务。他们每年在大约1万6千份期刊上发表文章的数量超过120万。
This is now changing. According to the OECD report, some 75% of scholarly journals are now online. Entirely new business models are emerging; three main ones were identified by the report's authors. There is the so-called big deal, where institutional subscribers pay for access to a collection of online journal titles through site-licensing agreements. There is open-access publishing, typically supported by asking the author (or his employer) to pay for the paper to be published. Finally, there are open-access archives, where organisations such as universities or international laboratories support institutional repositories. Other models exist that are hybrids of these three, such as delayed open-access, where journals allow only subscribers to read a paper for the first six months, before making it freely available to everyone who wishes to see it.
现在，这些都在悄无声息地改变着。据经济合作与发展组织的这份报告显示，大约有75%的学术性期刊已经可以在线阅读。全新的商业模式正在异军突起；报告的撰写者明确指出了三大模式。首先是一种最具发展潜力的模式，即研究机构通过网络许可协议支付浏览在线期刊费用。第二种是开放式浏览出版，该模式下所需费用主要由作者或者其雇主支付。最后一种是开放式调用档案，一些机构例如大学或者国际实验室负责研究机构资料存储工作。当然也存在着其他模式，只不过是以上三种模式的混合产物，例如延迟开放浏览，即只有用户才可以在最新六个月内使用期刊，而后向想要获取该期刊信息的浏览者免费开放。
All this could change the traditional form of the peer-review process, at least for the publication of papers. The process is organised by the publisher but conducted, for free, by scholars. The advantages afforded by the internet mean that primary data is becoming available freely online. Indeed, quite often the online paper has a direct link to it. This means that reported findings are more readily replicable and checkable by other teams of researchers. Moreover, online publication offers the opportunity for others to comment on the research. Research is also becoming more collaborative so that, before they have been finalised, papers have been reviewed by several authors. This central tenet of scholarly publishing is changing, too.
所有的这些都会颠覆同行评估过程的传统方式，至少对于论文发表是这样的。出版商负责组织评估，但是具体操作过程由学者不计报酬地实行。因特网的优势即科研的原始资料或者数据能够逐渐地在网上免费获得。确实，网上论文十有八九都会和原始资料有直接链接。这意味着其他研究团队能够更加快捷迅速地复制和检验发表的科研结果。并且，网络也可以为其他人评价所做研究提供机会。与此同时，研究会变得越来越具有合作性，以至于在得到最终结果之前，许多人已经发表了各自的看法。学术出版的核心原则也正在改变

fengfireUID: 2616761

前三个看的是什么材料呀？

missingqiqiUID: 2688720

This house believes that innovation works best when government does least.


The moderator's opening remarks

What is the right role for government in spurring innovation? The outlines of this age-old debate will be familiar to many. One side argues that governments inevitably get it wrong when they get too involved in innovation: picking the wrong technology winners, say, or ploughing subsidies into politically popular projects rather than the most deserving ones. The other rebuts that given the grave global challenges we face today—in the 1960s America thought it was the Soviet race into space, today many countries worry about climate change and pandemic threats—governments need to do much more to support innovation.

Happily for us, gentle reader, the two sides in the Economist's latest debate are moving beyond such platitudes to novel arguments. Arguing in favour of the motion that innovation works best when government does least is Amar Bhide, a professor at Harvard and author of "The Venturesome Economy". His opening statement roundly denounces the visions of home-grown Silicon Valleys that dance in the heads of bureaucrats worldwide as "a dubious conception of paradise". California's bloated government is bankrupt and Japan's once formidable MITI agency is in tatters, he observes, but market-minded Hong Kong is flourishing (and its hyper-commercial denizens far richer than their coddled Japanese counterparts).

He adds for good measure that the "techno-fetishist" view of innovation represented by the top-heavy Japanese model pales in comparison with a robust, bottom-up version of innovation that harnesses the creativity and enterprise of the many, including the "venturesome consumers". He does acknowledge that governments have a role to play: "Doing the least doesn't mean doing nothing at all." However, his advocacy of a least is best policy, though conceptually elegant, seems a bit slippery and is probably unhelpful in practice. In future postings, perhaps he will explain how exactly governments should decide whether they are doing too little or too much to help innovation.

David Sandalow, author of "Freedom from Oil" and a senior official in America's Department of Energy, presents a robust defence of government. He does make the familiar points about the need for governments to invest in education and fundamental research. He also adds slightly more controversial arguments about why government policies are required to overcome market failures (such as the recent financial crisis, which unfairly sapped innovators of credit) and misaligned incentives that hold back the adoption of worthwhile innovations (like energy-saving technologies with speedy paybacks).

More striking is Mr Sandalow's linkage of the global trend towards open innovation, which means companies increasingly rely on ideas from outside their own research laboratories, with the need for greater government spending on innovation. He argues that open innovation will get technologies faster to market, but at the expense of fundamental research of the sort that AT&T Bell Labs or Xerox Parc used to do. He insists that "without government support for such research, the seed corn for future generations would be at risk". That is a clever point, but it does not answer the obvious rebuttal that governments would inevitably invest in the wrong sorts of research (think, to stick with his analogy, of the money spent by the American government subsidising corn ethanol, an environmentally questionable but politically popular fuel).
Are you waiting for further rounds of jousting to decide which side to support? Don't be a mugwump, sitting on the fence with your mug in one hand and your wump on the other.

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missingqiqiUID: 2688720

啊

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