决战1010精英组Economist阅读汇——吕小焕分贴

huan19880122UID: 2657720

先开个头

好词（或下划线）、句型、连接、例子、生词、红宝词汇、备注 、不懂的

---------------------------------------------------------------------------




http://www.economist.com/debate/overview/168

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
结构
1# about the debates
2# background reading
3# opening statements
4# rebuttal statements
5# guest
6# closing statements
7#winner announcement
8# 附注

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

About this debate

What is the right role for government in spurring（很生动） innovation? The outlines of this age-old debate will be familiar to many. One side argues that governments inevitably（不可避免地） get it wrong when they get too involved in innovation: picking the wrong technology winners, say, or ploughing subsidies into（确实很生动） politically popular projects rather than the most deserving ones. The other （经典、常用）rebuts that given the grave global challenges we face today—in the 1960s America thought it was the Soviet race into space（不了解，查一下）, today （通过时间对比转折）many countries worry about climate change and pandemic threats—governments need to do much more to support innovation.

huan19880122UID: 2657720

Moon dreams

The Americans may still go to the moon before the Chinese

Feb 18th 2010 | From The Economist print edition
AP Can you direct me to reception, please?
WHEN America’s space agency, NASA, announced its spending plans in February, some people worried that its cancellation of the Constellation（星座，星群；群英荟萃） moon programme had ended any hopes of Americans returning to the Earth’s rocky satellite. The next footprints on the lunar regolith（风化层，土被） were therefore thought likely to be Chinese. Now, though, the private sector（部门） is arguing that the new spending plan actually makes it more likely America will return to the moon.
The new plan encourages firms to compete to provide transport to low Earth orbit (LEO)
（a usually circular orbit from about 90 to 600 miles (about 140 to 970 kilometers) above the earth）. The budget proposes $6 billion over five years to spur the development of commercial

（商业的） crew and cargo services to the international space station. This money will be spent on “man-rating” existing rockets, such as Boeing’s（波音客机） Atlas V（atlas红宝示意地图集，此处认为是取巨神阿特拉斯，身负重担之意）, and on developing new spacecraft that could be launched on many different rockets. The point of all this activity is to create healthy private-sector competition for transport to the space station—and in doing so to drive down（很常用，自己用的时候却总想不起来） the cost of getting into space.
Eric Anderson, the boss of a space-travel company called Space Adventures, is optimistic about the changes. They will, he says, build “railroads into space”. Space Adventures has already sent seven people to the space station, using Russian rockets. It would certainly benefit from a new generation of cheap launchers（发射器，发射台）.
Another potential beneficiary—and advocate of private-sector transport—（可用的插入方法）is Robert Bigelow, a wealthy entrepreneur（企业家） who founded a hotel chain called Budget Suites of America. Mr Bigelow has so far spent $180m of his own money on space development—probably more than any other individual in history. He has been developing so-called expandable space habitats, a technology he bought from NASA a number of years ago.
These habitats, which are folded up for launch and then inflated in space, were designed as interplanetary vehicles for a trip to Mars, but they are also likely to be useful general-purpose accommodation. The company already has two scaled-down

versions
in orbit.
Mr Bigelow is preparing to build a space station that will offer cheap access to space to other governments—something he believes will generate a lot of interest. The current plan is to launch the first full-scale habitat (called Sundancer) in 2014. Further
(仔细看文章确实连接非常的紧密)modules will be added to this over the course of a year, and the result will be a space station with more usable volume than the existing international one. Mr Bigelow’s price is just under $23m per astronaut（宇航员）. That is about half what Russia charges for a trip to the international station, a price that is likely to go up after the space shuttle retires later this year（航天飞机退役后价格很可能上涨，开始理解错了）. He says he will be able to offer this price by bulk-buying launches on newly man-rated rockets. Since most of the cost of space travel is the launch, the price might come down even more if the private sector can lower the costs of getting into orbit.
The ultimate aim of all his investment, Mr Bigelow says, is to get to the moon. LEO is merely his proving ground（很有感觉）（proving ground a place for scientific experimentation or testing (as of vehicles or weapons). He says that if the technology does work in orbit, the habitats will be ideal for building bases on the moon. To go there, however, he will have to prove that the expandable habitat does indeed work, and also generate substantial returns on his investment in LEO, to provide the necessary cash.
If all goes well, the next target will be L1, the point 85% of the way to the moon where the gravitational pulls of moon and Earth balance. “It’s a terrific dumping off point,” he says. “We could transport a completed lunar base [to L1] and put it down on the lunar surface intact.”
There are others with lunar ambitions, too.（同样是连接） Some 20 teams are competing for the Google Lunar X Prize, a purse of $30m that will be given to the first private mission which lands a robot on the moon, travels across the surface and sends pictures back to Earth. Space Adventures, meanwhile, is in discussions with almost a dozen potential clients（客户） about a circumlunar mission, costing $100m a head.
The original Apollo project was mainly a race to prove the superiority of American capitalism over Soviet communism. Capitalism won—but at the cost of creating, in NASA, one of the largest bureaucracies（官僚机构） in American history. If the United States is to return to the moon, it needs to do so in a way that is demonstrably superior to the first trip—for example, being led by business rather than government. Engaging in another government-driven spending battle, this time with the Chinese, will do nothing more than show that America has missed the point.

huan19880122UID: 2657720

Climate-change politics
Cap-and-trade's last hurrah
The decline of a once wildly popular idea
（题目表达很好）
Mar 18th 2010 | From The Economist print edition
Gaia lent an unhelpful hand



Gaia：the hypothesis that the living and nonliving components of earth function as a single system in such a way that the living component regulates and maintains conditions (as the temperature of the ocean or composition of the atmosphere) so as to be suitable for life also : this system regarded as a single organism
IN THE 1990s cap-and-trade—the idea of reducing carbon-dioxide emissions by auctioning(拍卖) off a set number of pollution permits（污染许可）, which could then be traded in a market—was the darling of the green policy circuit. A similar（这里是名词） approach to sulphur dioxide（原来二氧化硫这样表达的） emissions, introduced under the 1990 Clean Air Act, was credited with having helped solve acid-rain problems quickly and cheaply. And its great advantage was that it hardly looked like a tax at all, though it would bring in a lot of money.
The cap-and-trade provision（规定，条款） expected in the climate legislation（立法，法律） that Senators（参议院议员） John Kerry, Joe Lieberman and Lindsey Graham have been working on, which may be unveiled（公诸于众） shortly, will be a poor shadow of that once alluring idea. Cap-and-trade will not be the centrepiece of the legislation (as it was of last year’s House climate bill, Waxman-Markey), but is instead likely to apply only to electrical utilities, at least for the time being（最起码现在是这样）（electrical utilities指什么？）. Transport fuels will probably be approached with some sort of tax or fee; industrial emissions will be tackled with regulation（现有规定？指的是什么） and possibly, later on, carbon trading. The hope will be to cobble together cuts in emissions similar in scope（范围） to those foreseen under the House bill, in which the vast majority of domestic（家用/国内的） cuts in emissions came from utilities.（同上，utilities指什么）
This composite approach（文章里approach的应用很多，学习） is necessary because the charms of economy-wide cap-and-trade have faded badly. The ability to raise money from industry is not so attractive in a downturn. Market mechanisms（市场结构/市场机能） have lost their appeal as a result of the financial crisis（金融危机）. More generally, climate is not something the public seems to feel strongly about at the moment, in part because of that recession（经济萧条）, in part perhaps because they have worries about the science (see article), in part（一句话三个in part做链接词）, it appears, because the winter has been a snowy one.
The public is, though, quite keen on new initiatives on energy, which any Senate（参议院） bill will shower with incentives and subsidies whether the energy in question be renewable, nuclear, pumped out from beneath the seabed or still confined to research laboratories. So the bill will need to raise money, which is why cap-and-trade is likely to remain for the utilities, and revenues（税收） will be raised from transport fuels. A complex way of doing this, called a linked fee, would tie the revenues to the value of carbon in the utility market; a straightforward carbon tax may actually have a better chance of passing.
Energy bills have in the past garnered bipartisan（of, relating to, or involving members of two parties <a bipartisan commission> specifically : marked by or involving cooperation, agreement, and compromise between two major political parties <bipartisan support for the bill>） support, and this one also needs to. That is why Senator Graham(这个人是谁) matters. He could bring on board both Democrats（民主党 驴） and Republicans（共和党 象）. Mr Graham’s contribution has been to focus the rhetoric（红宝词汇，修辞学，花言巧语的） not just on near-term（近期） jobs, but also on longer-term competitiveness. Every day America does not have climate legislation, he argues, is a day that China’s grip on the global green economy gets tighter.
He also thinks action on the issue would be good for his party. While short-term Republican interests call for opposition, the party’s long-term interests must include broadening its support. Among young people, for example, polling suggests that the environment, and the climate, matter a great deal.
Unfortunately for this argument,
tactics（战略，战术） matter, and young voters are unlikely to play a great role in the mid-term election. Other Republicans may think it better to wait before re-establishing the party’s green credentials. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, for example, is happy to talk about climate as a problem, and talks about the desirability of some sort of carbon restriction—perhaps a tax, or some version（版本，说法etc） of Maria Cantwell’s “cap-and-dividend” scheme（方案，计划）. But she expresses no great urgency about the subject. And she has introduced one of two measures intended to curtail the power the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) now has to regulate carbon, on the ground that that is a matter for legislation sometime in the future.
The EPA’s new powers undoubtedly make the charms of legislation greater. Some industrial lobbies（游说议员者） may decide that the bill will provide the certainty they need to decide about future investment, and get behind it. The White House has been supportive of late（近来）, inviting senators over to talk. But it remains an uphill（against difficulties）
struggle, and the use of reconciliation（和解，讲和） to pass health care could greatly increase thegradient（坡度） of the hill（指更加的困难）, as Mr Graham has made abundantly clear（非常清楚）.
If the bill does not pass, it will change environmental politics in America and beyond. The large, comparatively business-friendly environmental groups that have been proponents（支持者）of trading schemes will lose ground（失去地盘，撤退）, with organisations closer to the grassroots（基层的，一般民众的）, and perhaps with a taste for civil disobedience, gaining power. Carbon-trading schemes elsewhere in the world have already been deprived of（丧失）a vast new market—Waxman-Markey美国众议院通过《2009美国清洁能源与安全法案》（American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009）草案。此法案由亨利·瓦克斯曼（Henry Waxman）和爱德华·马凯（Edward Markey）提出，所以也称《瓦克斯曼-马凯气候变化议案》(Waxman-Markey Bill)。now dead,would have seen a great many carbon credits bought in from overseas—and if America turned away from cap-and-trade altogether they would look even less transformative(缺乏改革力的)than they do today. And as market-based approaches lose relevance（相关，适当）, what climate action continues may come to lean more heavily on（依靠lean on： to apply pressure to） the command-and-control techniques they were intended to replace.


原来改好的word竟然忘了存~复制回来又回去 颜色好多都没了~

weaselUID: 2739489

做的统一主题的debate，有一些问题，先占着位置，希望能一起讨论，呵呵

huan19880122UID: 2657720

Genetically modified food

Attack of the really quite likeable tomatoes

The success of genetically modified crops provides opportunities to win over their critics

Feb 25th 2010 | From The Economist print edition

IN THE 14 years since the first genetically modified crops（农作物） were planted commercially, their descendants, relatives and remixes have gone forth（往前、往外） and multiplied like profitable, high-tech pondweed（水池草？什么东西）. A new report (see article) shows that 25 countries now grow GM crops, with the total area under cultivation（耕作） now larger than Peru. Three-quarters of the farmland used to grow soya（大豆、黄豆） is now sown（播种） with a genetically modified variant, and the figures for cotton are not that far behind, thanks to its success in India. China recently gave the safety go-ahead to its first GM rice variety and a new GM maize（玉米） that should make better pig feed. More and more plants are having their genomes sequenced: a full sequence for maize was published late last year, the soya genome in January. Techniques for altering genomes are moving ahead almost as fast as the genomes themselves are stacking up, and new crops with more than one added trait（特色、品质） are coming to market.

小结：基因作物的现状


Such stories of success will strike fear into some hearts, and not only in GM-averse Europe; a GM backlash（反冲、反撞、强烈反对） is under way in India, focused on insect-resistant（抵抗的） aubergines（茄子）. Some of these fears are understandable, but lacking supporting evidence they have never been compelling（引人注目的、有说服力的）. On safety, the fear which cuts closest to home, the record continues to look good. Governments need to keep testing and monitoring, but that may be becoming easier. More precise modifications, and better technologies for monitoring stray DNA both within plants and in the environment around them, mean that it is getting easier to be sure that nothing untoward（不幸的） is going on.
小结：百姓的担心 基因作物的安全问题


Then there is the worry that GM crops are a way for big companies to take over the livelihoods of small farmers（农民的生计） and, in the end, a chunk（又短又厚的块状物、相当大量） of nature itself. Seen in this light

（从这种角度讲） the fact that 90% of the farmers growing GM crops are comparatively poor and in developing countries is sinister（灾难性的）, not salutary（有益健康的）; given（以…为例） Monsanto’s（孟山都、一家美国公司） dominance（优势） in America’s soyabean market, it seems to suggest incipient（初期的、开始的） world domination（支配、统治）.
Monsanto支配着美国的大豆市场，这似乎暗示着初步支配了世界。 It is certainly true that big firms make a lot of money selling GM seeds: the GM seed market was worth $10.5 billion in 2009, and the crops that grew from that seed were worth over $130 billion. But multinationals are not the only game in town. The governments of China (which has increased agricultural research across the board), India and Brazil are also developing new GM crops. In 2009 a GM version of an Indian cotton variety, developed in the public sector, came to market, and a variety engineered by a private Indian firm has been approved for commercialisation. Charities, such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, are also funding efforts in various countries to make crops more hardy or nutritious. GM seeds that come from government research bodies, or from local firms, may not arouse quite so much opposition as those from large foreign companies, especially when they provide characteristics that make crops better, not just easier to farm.
小结：另一种担心是大公司抢走农民的生计

Moreover, where the seeds come from is a separate question from who should pay for them, as Mr Gates points out. As with drugs and vaccines, it is possible to get products that were developed with profit in mind to the people who need them using donor money and clever pricing and licensing deals(谁帮分析一下句子结构？？？).
In the longer term, if the seeds deliver what the farmers require, the need for such special measures should diminish. After all, the whole idea is not that poor farmers should go on being poor. It is that poor farmers should get a bit richer, be able to invest a bit more, and thus increase the food available to a growing and predominantly（占主导地位地） urban population.

More than strange fruits
There is another worry about GM technology, though, that should be taken seriously. It is that its success and appeal to technophiles may, in the minds of those who pay for agricultural research（插入语应用很多，借鉴）, crowd out other approaches to improving farming. Because it depends on intellectual（知识性的） property that can be protected, GM is ripe for private investment. There is a lot of other agricultural research that is less amenable（愿意服从的、顺从的） to corporate ownership but still needs doing. From soil management（管理） to weather forecasts to the preservation, study and use of agricultural biodiversity, there are many ways to improve the agricultural systems on which the world’s food supply depends, and make them more resilient（有弹性的、可恢复的） as well as more profitable. A farm is not a just a clever crop: it is an ecosystem managed with intelligence. GM crops have a great role to play in that development, but they are only a part of the whole.
小结：另一种担忧，由于知识产权得到保护，基因作物技术的成熟，会刺激个人在基因作物的投资，而作物其他方面的学科（不用易受到产权保护的方面）的研究便相对较少，因而会造成不平衡。

huan19880122UID: 2657720

background reading 总结（一）
好的用词、短语      
Spurring innovation 促进改革创新
Plough subsidise into 向…投入资金
drive down 下调
so-called 所谓
potential beneficiary 潜在的受益人
ultimate aim 最终目的
a purse of $30m
XX的价格
proving ground: proving ground a place for scientific experimentation or testing (as of vehicles or weapons
$100m a head 每人$100m
Prove the superiority of 证明…的先进性
demonstrably superior to
scaled-down version 缩小版
生词
inevitably 不可避免的
constellation 星座，星群，群英荟萃
programme = program
regolith 风化层，土被
sector 部门
launcher 发射器，发射台
vehicles 交通工具
astronaut 宇航员

句型、连接
1、One side argues…the other rebuts
2、The point of all this activity is to…and in doing so
3、The current … further
4、Sth is merely sb’s proving ground.
5、There are others with … too
6、Engaging in another government-driven spending battle, this time with the Chinese, will do nothing more than show that America has missed the point.
7、Can you direct me to reception, please?
各种词汇积累
low Earth orbit (LEO)

a usually circular orbit from about 90 to 600 miles (about 140 to 970 kilometers) above the earth
Boeing
波音客机
Atlas
巨神阿特拉斯，身负重担之意

银落UID: 2632560

lz加油~ 请坚持下去~

huan19880122UID: 2657720

Background reading 总结二

生词
auction 拍卖
provision 规定 条款 legislation 立法 法律 Senators 参议院议员
downturn 低迷时期，衰退时期market mechanisms 市场结构，市场机能
financial crisis 金融危机
recession 经济萧条
revenues 税收
bipartisan 获得两党支持的政策
rhetoric 修辞学 花言巧语的
near-term 近期
Democrats（民主党 驴）
Republicans（共和党 象）
tactics 战略，战术
lobbies 游说议员者

uphill ：against difficulties

好词
a similar approach to …
be credited with
be a poor shadow of that once alluring idea
at least for the time being 最起码现在这样
be approached with 通过…着手解
be tackled with
cobble together 拼凑
the charms of…have faded badly
shower with 不知道怎么表达就是充满很多，会有很多，像shower一样 囧
straightforward
of late 近来
greatly increase the gradient of the hill 加大了难度
abundantly clear 非常清楚
lose ground 失去地盘，撤退
be deprived of 丧失
lean on ：to apply pressure to

连接、句子
1、auctioning(拍卖) off a set number of pollution permits（污染许可）, which could then be traded in a market—was the darling of the green policy circuit.
2、in part because of that recession（经济萧条）, in part perhaps because they have
worries about the science (see article), in part（一句话三个in part做链接词）, it appears, because the winter has been a snowy one.
3、Every day America does not have climate legislation, he argues, is a day that China’s grip on the global green economy gets tighter.


注：Waxman-Markey美国众议院通过《2009美国清洁能源与安全法案》（American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009）草案。此法案由亨利·瓦克斯曼（Henry Waxman）和爱德华·马凯（Edward Markey）提出，所以也称《瓦克斯曼-马凯气候变化议案》(Waxman-Markey Bill)。

huan19880122UID: 2657720

The moderator's opening remarks

Mar 22nd 2010 | Mr Vijay V. Vaitheeswaran


What is the right role for government in spurring innovation? The outlines（大纲、要点） of this age-old debate will be familiar to many（many指人）. 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（很好的开头）, gentle reader, the two sides in the Economist's latest debate are moving beyond such platitudes to novel（新奇新颖的） arguments. Arguing in favour of the motion(意向) 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(直率地、全面地) denounces the visions of home-grown Silicon Valleys that dance in the heads of bureaucrats（官僚作风） worldwide as "a dubious conception of paradise". California's bloated government is bankrupt and Japan's once formidable（可怕的） MITI

日本的通产省，代表集体资本主义，详见备注 agency is in tatters（本意破布）, he observes, but market-minded Hong Kong is flourishing（in tatters 和 flourishing 形成强烈的对比） (and its hyper-commercial denizens far richer than their coddled Japanese counterparts).（hyper-commercial denizens和coddled Japanese counterparts强烈对比）
He adds for good measure that the "techno-fetishist物神崇拜者" view of innovation represented by the top-heavy（头重脚轻、上层机构臃肿的） Japanese model pales in comparison with a robust, bottom-up version of innovation that harnesses（原意上马具，此处引申为利用） the creativity and enterprise of the many, including the "venturesome consumers". He does acknowledge（让步） that governments have a role to play: "Doing the least doesn't mean doing nothing at all." However, his advocacy of(主张) 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（引人注意的） 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（竞技） to decide which side to support? Don't be a mugwump（中立者）, sitting on the fence with your mug in one hand and your wump on the other. Cast your vote now.

huan19880122UID: 2657720

Opening statement 总结一
读完opening statement后最大的感觉就是文中应用了大量的强烈对比，无论是在用词上还是句型连接上，段与段间的连接也十分紧密。

好句子、连接
Happily for us ,…
Arguing in favour of the motion that… is Amar Bhide
seed corn for future generations would be at risk
Cast your vote now.

生词
bureaucrat 官僚作风
fetishist 物神崇拜者
mugwump 中立者
jousting 竞技

好词、好短语
move beyond such platitudes to novel arguments
dubious conception of paradise
bloated government
in tatters 与 flourishing
market-minded Hong Kong
hyper-commercial denizens与coddled Japanese counterparts
top-haeavy 头重较轻、上层机构臃肿的

与
robust ,bottom-up version
pale…in comparison
harness the creativity
advocacy of 主张的多种表达方法
present a robust defence of government
linkage of …towards

备注
MITI

日本的通产省，代表集体资本主义
集体资本主义的独特之处，是它重视长期的合作关系。这是经济不是受非人格化价格机制的指挥，而处于人们所称的“关系市场”（relational markets）的指导下。
其典型无疑是日本的通产省（MITI），他现在依然通过一种“指导性”计划系统来督管经济（但不像20世纪五六十年代那么公开）。
第二次世界大战之前的日本经济在很多方面都显示出了资本主义的诸多特征，包括追求最大化和短期行为倾向。但开始于战前并在战后加速进行的经济重建已被证明取得了惊人的成功。日本的“经济奇迹”造就了一个工业大国。虽然如此，集体资本主义的成功也不得不付出代价。在合作与协作的背后，日本经济模式对工人及家庭的要求太多。长时间工作和高度严格的劳动条件，可能意味着个人主义被扼杀，工作变成了人类生活的中心。同样，日本社会“共同体”式企业的主导地位，使新封建式的责任感继续存在，对义务的赏识高过了对权力的尊重。因此，批评家认为集体资本主义总是以权威主义为支撑；在中国，迅速发展的市场经济和地位牢固的共产党执政混合在一起。最后，1997年—1999年东亚经济的急剧衰退，表明建立在不稳定的金融活动基础上的经济成功是何等脆弱。