(English Quiz 231)
1. As China's economic growth has surged to astonishing levels in recent years, a matching wave of books chronicling its rise has poured from the presses of publishers in Europe and the U.S. Many of these tend to be rather breathless accounts of how China's boom is affecting its own people and the rest of the world—tales of human struggle and environmental destruction within the Middle Kingdom, or, elsewhere, of entire steel factories being crated up and shipped to the mainland along with tens of thousands of jobs. But a second broad classification of China books is now emerging. These attempt to explain what countries and individuals can do, or ought to do, in reaction to China's cataclysmic change. A pair of prime examples is The China Fantasy by James Mann, a former Beijing bureau chief for the Los Angeles Times, and The Writing on the Wall, by British journalist Will Hutton. The two volumes are both nominally about China, but their aims are to influence policy in the West. Their subtitles make that much clearer: How Our Leaders Explain Away Chinese Repression gets second billing on Mann's book, while Hutton's subtitle is Why We Must Embrace China as a Partner or Face It as an Enemy.
Q: 試翻 "The two volumns ... in the West."
2. The similarities end there. Mann's is a slim volume, an extended essay skewering what he sees as the hypocrisy of U.S. politicians in dealing with China. For the sake of maintaining good trading relations, Mann argues, American leaders have ignored the inconvenient fact that China is run by a repressive, sometimes brutal regime that stands against everything they profess to hold dear: democracy, human rights and freedom. They excuse this behavior with what he calls the "soothing scenario" that China will eventually come around to sharing their values, based on the assumption that democracy is a necessary byproduct of economic development. Mann calls this the "Starbucks fallacy," a reference to New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof's argument that when people have more choices of coffee than they do of leaders, political change is inevitable. But Mann sees a third way, a path between the advent of democracy and a collapse into chaos that is generally considered to be China's only alternative to political change. Twenty years from now, he says, China could still be as authoritarian as it is today. Far from ushering in democracy, it's possible that China's newly rich urban elite, with a vested interest in maintaining the status quo, could keep its rural masses disenfranchised indefinitely. The U.S. needs to keep that scenario in mind when dealing with Beijing, Mann says—and not just assume everything will work out in the end.
Q: 試翻 "They excuse this behavior ... byproduct of economic development."
Q: 試翻 "Far from ushering in democracy, ... disenfranchised indefinitely."
3. Hutton's book is much more ambitious in scope, particularly for someone who is not a China specialist. (He is a former newspaper editor and author of books on economics and European and U.S. politics.) In 400 pages dense with facts and footnotes—his bibliography runs to 27 pages—Hutton sets out a detailed analysis of China's rise and of what Western nations must do to preserve a leading role in the face of it. His proposition is fairly simple, and pretty much diametrically opposed to Mann's. "If the next century is going to be Chinese," Hutton writes in his preface, "it will be only because China embraces the economic and political pluralism of the west." Beijing faces a host of woes ranging from pervasive corruption to a crippled banking system to the contradictions inherent in its combination of half-baked capitalism and single-party control. Without the adoption of democratic principles and institutions such as the rule of law, representative government and a free press, China's current path is unsustainable—in other words, it's democracy or bust. It is in the West's interest to encourage China's recognition of that fact, Hutton argues—and also to reaffirm its own commitment to those ideals.
4. The China Fantasy and The Writing on the Wall are penned by men who clearly feel passionately about their subject. Mann's book is a distillation of years of observations on the interaction between Beijing and Washington. On the other hand, while Hutton's research is prodigious, he seems to begin with a set of preconceived ideas, and makes clear in his acknowledgments that he took on this project at the urging of his agent, despite knowing very little about China. I'm inclined to agree with Mann on the likelihood of democracy evolving in China anytime soon: as long as the economic boom continues to raise living standards, many Chinese will be inclined to leave the current system—authoritarian as it may be—alone. There is a place in the world, of course, for inductive reasoning like Hutton's, and for fresh ideas presented by nonspecialists. But in this case I'll have to concur with a certain Hunanese poet and politician who advised that it was best to "seek truth from the facts."
Q: 試翻 "As long as the economic boom continues ... alone."
2007年7月10日 星期二
English Quiz 230
(English Quiz 230)
1. Tetsuya Shiroo woke up that morning and got himself a gun. Before the day was over, he allegedly used it to murder Iccho Itoh, the mayor of the southwestern Japanese city of Nagasaki, outside his campaign office. While the April 17 shooting first appeared to be an assassination, it soon emerged that Shiroo, a 59-year-old yakuza (gangster) with ties to Yamaguchi-gumi, Japan's largest criminal syndicate, seemed motivated less by politics than by a petty personal grievance. He blamed a minor car accident on city construction work and wanted $17,000 in damages from the Nagasaki government. The result was absurd: an aging hoodlum gunning down a high-profile politician over pride and a virtual pittance, like some Japanese version of The Sopranos' griping mobster Paulie Walnuts. Those close to Japan's top syndicates say the bosses have distanced themselves from Shiroo, putting out word that he was acting alone. But there's reason to doubt this tidy narrative. The Japanese media reported that Shiroo had tried and failed to help a yakuza-linked company win government construction contracts. City officials excluded the company in a push to reduce yakuza influence in the construction sector. Shiroo may have murdered Itoh to intimidate other officials.
Q: 試翻 "While the April 17 shooting ... a petty personal grievance."
2. His real motive remains murky, but Shiroo's brazen act provides some insight into the shadowy world of the yakuza and the difficulties Japan's once mighty mafia faces as it struggles to adapt to the country's changing economic circumstances. Over the past several years, the mobsters' traditional revenue sources have been drying up, largely due to vastly reduced government spending on graft-prone public-works projects. With easy money harder to get, gangsters may be more likely to resort to strong-arm tactics as they fight for scraps. "The Nagasaki shooting is a harbinger of what's to come," says Mitsuhiro Suganuma, a former high-ranking agent with Japan's Public Security Intelligence Agency. "Their activities will become a lot more violent, and a lot more dangerous." While it may seem odd that yakuza could be hit by budget cuts, they're not immune to government belt-tightening. The construction industry has always been the lifeblood of the yakuza—the gumi in Yamaguchi-gumi is also frequently used to denote construction companies. During Japan's bubble economy in the 1980s, crime lords feasted on the lucrative real estate sector. Yakuza made a mint by intimidating residents into selling their property at below-market prices. Many gangs plowed profits into real estate projects—especially golf courses, which became one of the most mobbed-up industries in Japan. When the bubble popped and the government in the 1990s tried to spend the country back to fiscal health with massive public-works projects, the gangs siphoned off funds by delivering bribes to politicians to secure contracts for yakuza-linked construction firms. But in recent years, Japan's huge budget deficit has forced politicians to cut back on spending and crack down on bid rigging. "The construction industry is tight even for legitimate companies," says Takashi Kadokura, an independent researcher who specializes in the underground economy. "There's less money, and the pie is getting smaller—especially outside of major urban areas, where the yakuza still largely depend on traditional businesses."
Q: 試翻 "His real motive remains murky, ... changin economic circumstances."
Q: 試翻 "When the bubble popped ... construction firms."
3. The result is an underworld version of the rich/poor divide that plagues the rest of the country. Top echelons of major organizations like Yamaguchi-gumi—which controls roughly half the estimated 80,000 gangsters in Japan—are thriving due to booming economies in Tokyo and Osaka. They can make billions from gambling, loan-sharking, drugs and the protection racket. Meanwhile, smaller gangs in moribund regional cities like Nagasaki—which are more dependent on government spending to fuel local growth—are being squeezed. Increasingly desperate, they are turning up the heat on local officials to extort more money from a shrinking pool. "There are a lot of hidden tragedies involving yakuza-related organizations and bid rigging that never come out in the press," asserts Suganuma. The top syndicates, with wide-ranging interests to protect, have no desire to see local violence get out of hand. But mob bosses may not be able to control their subordinates the way they once did. "If the lower-level yakuza aren't getting any money or any work, they won't listen as well to their bosses," says Benjamin Fulford, a Tokyo-based journalist who writes on the gangs. More than half of yakuza are now classified by police as "associates" rather than fully fledged members; in 1991, only 1 out of 3 yakuza were associates. Weakening loyalty between employer and employee, the growing clout of Tokyo at the expense of outlying areas—these are trends most Japanese are experiencing. But just as the salaryman is far from an endangered species, the gangs aren't likely to disappear. Yukio Yamanouchi, an Osaka-based lawyer who represents Yamaguchi-gumi, says the yakuza "provide the services that Japanese society requires." As long as there's a market, the yakuza will exist. It's just good business.
Q: 試翻 "Meanwhile, smaller gangs in moribund regional cities ... are being squeezed."
1. Tetsuya Shiroo woke up that morning and got himself a gun. Before the day was over, he allegedly used it to murder Iccho Itoh, the mayor of the southwestern Japanese city of Nagasaki, outside his campaign office. While the April 17 shooting first appeared to be an assassination, it soon emerged that Shiroo, a 59-year-old yakuza (gangster) with ties to Yamaguchi-gumi, Japan's largest criminal syndicate, seemed motivated less by politics than by a petty personal grievance. He blamed a minor car accident on city construction work and wanted $17,000 in damages from the Nagasaki government. The result was absurd: an aging hoodlum gunning down a high-profile politician over pride and a virtual pittance, like some Japanese version of The Sopranos' griping mobster Paulie Walnuts. Those close to Japan's top syndicates say the bosses have distanced themselves from Shiroo, putting out word that he was acting alone. But there's reason to doubt this tidy narrative. The Japanese media reported that Shiroo had tried and failed to help a yakuza-linked company win government construction contracts. City officials excluded the company in a push to reduce yakuza influence in the construction sector. Shiroo may have murdered Itoh to intimidate other officials.
Q: 試翻 "While the April 17 shooting ... a petty personal grievance."
2. His real motive remains murky, but Shiroo's brazen act provides some insight into the shadowy world of the yakuza and the difficulties Japan's once mighty mafia faces as it struggles to adapt to the country's changing economic circumstances. Over the past several years, the mobsters' traditional revenue sources have been drying up, largely due to vastly reduced government spending on graft-prone public-works projects. With easy money harder to get, gangsters may be more likely to resort to strong-arm tactics as they fight for scraps. "The Nagasaki shooting is a harbinger of what's to come," says Mitsuhiro Suganuma, a former high-ranking agent with Japan's Public Security Intelligence Agency. "Their activities will become a lot more violent, and a lot more dangerous." While it may seem odd that yakuza could be hit by budget cuts, they're not immune to government belt-tightening. The construction industry has always been the lifeblood of the yakuza—the gumi in Yamaguchi-gumi is also frequently used to denote construction companies. During Japan's bubble economy in the 1980s, crime lords feasted on the lucrative real estate sector. Yakuza made a mint by intimidating residents into selling their property at below-market prices. Many gangs plowed profits into real estate projects—especially golf courses, which became one of the most mobbed-up industries in Japan. When the bubble popped and the government in the 1990s tried to spend the country back to fiscal health with massive public-works projects, the gangs siphoned off funds by delivering bribes to politicians to secure contracts for yakuza-linked construction firms. But in recent years, Japan's huge budget deficit has forced politicians to cut back on spending and crack down on bid rigging. "The construction industry is tight even for legitimate companies," says Takashi Kadokura, an independent researcher who specializes in the underground economy. "There's less money, and the pie is getting smaller—especially outside of major urban areas, where the yakuza still largely depend on traditional businesses."
Q: 試翻 "His real motive remains murky, ... changin economic circumstances."
Q: 試翻 "When the bubble popped ... construction firms."
3. The result is an underworld version of the rich/poor divide that plagues the rest of the country. Top echelons of major organizations like Yamaguchi-gumi—which controls roughly half the estimated 80,000 gangsters in Japan—are thriving due to booming economies in Tokyo and Osaka. They can make billions from gambling, loan-sharking, drugs and the protection racket. Meanwhile, smaller gangs in moribund regional cities like Nagasaki—which are more dependent on government spending to fuel local growth—are being squeezed. Increasingly desperate, they are turning up the heat on local officials to extort more money from a shrinking pool. "There are a lot of hidden tragedies involving yakuza-related organizations and bid rigging that never come out in the press," asserts Suganuma. The top syndicates, with wide-ranging interests to protect, have no desire to see local violence get out of hand. But mob bosses may not be able to control their subordinates the way they once did. "If the lower-level yakuza aren't getting any money or any work, they won't listen as well to their bosses," says Benjamin Fulford, a Tokyo-based journalist who writes on the gangs. More than half of yakuza are now classified by police as "associates" rather than fully fledged members; in 1991, only 1 out of 3 yakuza were associates. Weakening loyalty between employer and employee, the growing clout of Tokyo at the expense of outlying areas—these are trends most Japanese are experiencing. But just as the salaryman is far from an endangered species, the gangs aren't likely to disappear. Yukio Yamanouchi, an Osaka-based lawyer who represents Yamaguchi-gumi, says the yakuza "provide the services that Japanese society requires." As long as there's a market, the yakuza will exist. It's just good business.
Q: 試翻 "Meanwhile, smaller gangs in moribund regional cities ... are being squeezed."
English Quiz 229
(English Quiz 229)
1. So Darfur is a test case--not just of the world's commitment to stop genocide but also of its ability to prevent future African resource wars. Already, the fighting in western Sudan has spilled into Chad and the Central African Republic. At the Guereda refugee camp in Chad, near the Sudanese border, staff members from the International Medical Corps increasingly find themselves mediating conflicts between refugees and local farmers, who complain that the influx of refugees has ruined their land. The refugee camps house concentrated populations that are too big for the land to support, and water and firewood are all but exhausted. "Resources are simply insufficient to meet the overwhelming needs," warns Serge Male, U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees representative in Chad. At another camp, Touloum, home to 22,400, women's welfare officer Mariam Bakhet Ahmed tells me that this year, local villagers have raped 50 refugee women who ventured out for firewood. Touloum camp chief Haroon Ibra Diar describes how, when his people fled to Chad from the village of Abugamra, Sudan, in April 2004, the Janjaweed were employing macabre energy-saving measures. "They beheaded people and used their heads for firewood," he says. When I ask him what the future holds, he says, "We are farmers. But how can we farm here? There's not even enough water to drink. It's a land of death. That's all that it offers us."
Q: 試翻 "At the Guereda refugee camp ... has ruined their land."
2. The shifting dynamics of the fighting in Darfur illustrate why the prism through which the war is commonly explained--ethnic animosity between Arabs and blacks--may be less applicable than other factors, including the environment. Because of Darfur's harsh, dry terrain, the region's Arab herders and its non-Arab farmers have had to work together in the past: the farmers allowed the herders' livestock on their land in exchange for goods such as milk and meat. As resources become more scarce, that history of cooperation may help persuade some local Arabs and non-Arabs to join forces against the central government. Commanders of the non-Arab rebels told me some Janjaweed commanders have defected, in part out of fear that they will be abandoned by their backers in Khartoum and face arrest for war crimes. But those are still just small indications of change amid the continuing carnage in Darfur. A U.S.-brokered peace deal last year between rebel groups and the Sudanese government was not worth the paper it was written on. The U.N. has resolved to send in peacekeepers but has been stymied by Sudan's refusal to accept them. After a U.N. panel revealed that contrary to Sudan's denials, government planes have been transporting arms and military equipment to Darfur, Khartoum said it would accept the deployment of 3,000 U.N. troops. They would complement the 7,000 African Union peacekeepers already on the ground, but even that falls far short of what's needed to police a conflict involving hundreds of thousands of fighters and 2.5 million refugees. So far the Bush Administration has been unable to persuade other Security Council members, particularly China, to support more robust measures.
Q: 試翻 "The shifting dynamics ... including the environment."
3. The pillage of Darfur won't end until the world's powers pressure all sides to agree to a truce and allow for the deployment of a larger peacekeeping force. But that's just a start toward fixing Darfur's problems--and preventing similar conflicts from erupting elsewhere. In the longer term, Darfur and the rest of sub-Saharan Africa need sensible land-use policies and careful water management. And as climate change shrinks the availability of arable land and natural resources, Africa will need the developed world to do its part to curb the carbon emissions that contribute to global warming. For Africa, the cost of inaction could be devastating. Philip E. Clapp, president of the Washington-based National Environmental Trust, warns that Darfur may be "an advance warning" of climate-related apocalypses to come. Take rising sea levels: five of Africa's 10 largest cities are coastal, and 40% of Asia's population of 3.9 billion--1.5 billion people--live within 62 miles of the sea. "Darfur is small by comparison with what is projected," says Clapp. "It may be our last warning before the consequences of climate change become so enormous that they are beyond the capacity of industrialized nations to deal with."
Q: 試翻 "And as climate change ... contribute to global warming."
1. So Darfur is a test case--not just of the world's commitment to stop genocide but also of its ability to prevent future African resource wars. Already, the fighting in western Sudan has spilled into Chad and the Central African Republic. At the Guereda refugee camp in Chad, near the Sudanese border, staff members from the International Medical Corps increasingly find themselves mediating conflicts between refugees and local farmers, who complain that the influx of refugees has ruined their land. The refugee camps house concentrated populations that are too big for the land to support, and water and firewood are all but exhausted. "Resources are simply insufficient to meet the overwhelming needs," warns Serge Male, U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees representative in Chad. At another camp, Touloum, home to 22,400, women's welfare officer Mariam Bakhet Ahmed tells me that this year, local villagers have raped 50 refugee women who ventured out for firewood. Touloum camp chief Haroon Ibra Diar describes how, when his people fled to Chad from the village of Abugamra, Sudan, in April 2004, the Janjaweed were employing macabre energy-saving measures. "They beheaded people and used their heads for firewood," he says. When I ask him what the future holds, he says, "We are farmers. But how can we farm here? There's not even enough water to drink. It's a land of death. That's all that it offers us."
Q: 試翻 "At the Guereda refugee camp ... has ruined their land."
2. The shifting dynamics of the fighting in Darfur illustrate why the prism through which the war is commonly explained--ethnic animosity between Arabs and blacks--may be less applicable than other factors, including the environment. Because of Darfur's harsh, dry terrain, the region's Arab herders and its non-Arab farmers have had to work together in the past: the farmers allowed the herders' livestock on their land in exchange for goods such as milk and meat. As resources become more scarce, that history of cooperation may help persuade some local Arabs and non-Arabs to join forces against the central government. Commanders of the non-Arab rebels told me some Janjaweed commanders have defected, in part out of fear that they will be abandoned by their backers in Khartoum and face arrest for war crimes. But those are still just small indications of change amid the continuing carnage in Darfur. A U.S.-brokered peace deal last year between rebel groups and the Sudanese government was not worth the paper it was written on. The U.N. has resolved to send in peacekeepers but has been stymied by Sudan's refusal to accept them. After a U.N. panel revealed that contrary to Sudan's denials, government planes have been transporting arms and military equipment to Darfur, Khartoum said it would accept the deployment of 3,000 U.N. troops. They would complement the 7,000 African Union peacekeepers already on the ground, but even that falls far short of what's needed to police a conflict involving hundreds of thousands of fighters and 2.5 million refugees. So far the Bush Administration has been unable to persuade other Security Council members, particularly China, to support more robust measures.
Q: 試翻 "The shifting dynamics ... including the environment."
3. The pillage of Darfur won't end until the world's powers pressure all sides to agree to a truce and allow for the deployment of a larger peacekeeping force. But that's just a start toward fixing Darfur's problems--and preventing similar conflicts from erupting elsewhere. In the longer term, Darfur and the rest of sub-Saharan Africa need sensible land-use policies and careful water management. And as climate change shrinks the availability of arable land and natural resources, Africa will need the developed world to do its part to curb the carbon emissions that contribute to global warming. For Africa, the cost of inaction could be devastating. Philip E. Clapp, president of the Washington-based National Environmental Trust, warns that Darfur may be "an advance warning" of climate-related apocalypses to come. Take rising sea levels: five of Africa's 10 largest cities are coastal, and 40% of Asia's population of 3.9 billion--1.5 billion people--live within 62 miles of the sea. "Darfur is small by comparison with what is projected," says Clapp. "It may be our last warning before the consequences of climate change become so enormous that they are beyond the capacity of industrialized nations to deal with."
Q: 試翻 "And as climate change ... contribute to global warming."
English Quiz 228
(English Quiz 228)
1. The first sign that we are entering a dead zone is the carcass of a camel, gathering flies and red dust. Since camels can go for three weeks without water, according to local farmers, the heap of fur, hair and bleached bones is an ominous sight. We enter a mud-walled, straw-roofed village. Instead of offering the usual smiles and waves, the children duck away. The reason for the villagers' fear becomes evident a few minutes later: nine turbaned men on horseback, members of the Arab militia known as the Janjaweed, appear with rifles over their shoulders. We are gone before they can react, but their presence on the road in broad daylight provides a hint of their sense of invulnerability. Two more hours across scorched mountains and rocky desert, and we are in Iriba, the logistics base in northeast Chad for six camps of refugees from Darfur. Aid workers there tell me that as horrific as the suffering in Darfur is today, it is almost surely going to get worse. "The water is going. The firewood is gone. The land has lost its ability to regenerate," says Palouma Ponlibae, an agriculture and natural-resources officer for the relief agency CARE. "The refugees are going to have to move. There's going to be nothing here to sustain life."
2. Darfur, a barren, mountainous land just below the Sahara in western Sudan, is the world's worst man-made disaster. In four years, according to the U.N., fighting has killed more than 200,000 people and made refugees of 2.5 million more. The conflict is typically characterized as genocide, waged by the Arab Janjaweed and their backers in the Sudanese government, against Darfur's black Africans. But what is often overlooked is that the roots of the conflict may have more to do with ecology than ethnicity. To live on the poor and arid soil of the Sahel--just south of the Sahara--is to be mired in an eternal fight for water, food and shelter. The few pockets of good land have been the focus of intermittent conflict for decades between nomads (who tend to be Arabs) and settled farmers (who are both Arab and African). That competition is intensifying. The Sahara is advancing steadily south, smothering soil with sand. Rainfall has been declining in the region for the past half-century, according to the National Center for Atmospheric Research. In Darfur there are too many people in a hot, poor, shrinking land, and it's not hard to start a fight in a place like that.
Q: 試翻 "The few pockets ... both Arab and African."
3. The devastation of Darfur highlights the potentially catastrophic effects of climate change on societies across Africa. The U.N. estimates that the lives of as many as 90 million Africans--most of them in and around the Sahara--could be "at risk" on account of global warming. Many of Africa's armed conflicts can be explained as tinderboxes of climate change lit by the spark of ancient rivalry. In Somalia, nearly two decades of anarchy have been exacerbated by eight years of drought. In Zimbabwe, relief agencies say President Robert Mugabe's disastrous rule is being overtaken by an even greater catastrophe, a three-month drought that wiped out the maize crop, fueling tensions between government-allied haves and opposition have-nots. Apart from drought, other environmental challenges can prove deadly. A growing number of experts believe the 1994 genocide in Rwanda is best understood as a contest between too many people on too little land. Environmental skeptics, including the Bush Administration, dispute the more dire predictions about climate change. But others in the developed world are beginning to sound alarms about the weather's role in warmaking. On April 16, 11 former U.S. admirals and generals published a report for the think tank CNA Corporation that described climate change as a "threat multiplier" in volatile parts of the world. The next day, British Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett hosted the first-ever debate on climate change and armed conflict at the U.N. Security Council. "What makes wars start?" asked Beckett. "Fights over water. Changing patterns of rainfall. Fights over food production, land use. There are few greater potential threats to our economies too ... but also to peace and security itself."
Q: 試翻 "On April 16, ... in volatile parts of the world."
1. The first sign that we are entering a dead zone is the carcass of a camel, gathering flies and red dust. Since camels can go for three weeks without water, according to local farmers, the heap of fur, hair and bleached bones is an ominous sight. We enter a mud-walled, straw-roofed village. Instead of offering the usual smiles and waves, the children duck away. The reason for the villagers' fear becomes evident a few minutes later: nine turbaned men on horseback, members of the Arab militia known as the Janjaweed, appear with rifles over their shoulders. We are gone before they can react, but their presence on the road in broad daylight provides a hint of their sense of invulnerability. Two more hours across scorched mountains and rocky desert, and we are in Iriba, the logistics base in northeast Chad for six camps of refugees from Darfur. Aid workers there tell me that as horrific as the suffering in Darfur is today, it is almost surely going to get worse. "The water is going. The firewood is gone. The land has lost its ability to regenerate," says Palouma Ponlibae, an agriculture and natural-resources officer for the relief agency CARE. "The refugees are going to have to move. There's going to be nothing here to sustain life."
2. Darfur, a barren, mountainous land just below the Sahara in western Sudan, is the world's worst man-made disaster. In four years, according to the U.N., fighting has killed more than 200,000 people and made refugees of 2.5 million more. The conflict is typically characterized as genocide, waged by the Arab Janjaweed and their backers in the Sudanese government, against Darfur's black Africans. But what is often overlooked is that the roots of the conflict may have more to do with ecology than ethnicity. To live on the poor and arid soil of the Sahel--just south of the Sahara--is to be mired in an eternal fight for water, food and shelter. The few pockets of good land have been the focus of intermittent conflict for decades between nomads (who tend to be Arabs) and settled farmers (who are both Arab and African). That competition is intensifying. The Sahara is advancing steadily south, smothering soil with sand. Rainfall has been declining in the region for the past half-century, according to the National Center for Atmospheric Research. In Darfur there are too many people in a hot, poor, shrinking land, and it's not hard to start a fight in a place like that.
Q: 試翻 "The few pockets ... both Arab and African."
3. The devastation of Darfur highlights the potentially catastrophic effects of climate change on societies across Africa. The U.N. estimates that the lives of as many as 90 million Africans--most of them in and around the Sahara--could be "at risk" on account of global warming. Many of Africa's armed conflicts can be explained as tinderboxes of climate change lit by the spark of ancient rivalry. In Somalia, nearly two decades of anarchy have been exacerbated by eight years of drought. In Zimbabwe, relief agencies say President Robert Mugabe's disastrous rule is being overtaken by an even greater catastrophe, a three-month drought that wiped out the maize crop, fueling tensions between government-allied haves and opposition have-nots. Apart from drought, other environmental challenges can prove deadly. A growing number of experts believe the 1994 genocide in Rwanda is best understood as a contest between too many people on too little land. Environmental skeptics, including the Bush Administration, dispute the more dire predictions about climate change. But others in the developed world are beginning to sound alarms about the weather's role in warmaking. On April 16, 11 former U.S. admirals and generals published a report for the think tank CNA Corporation that described climate change as a "threat multiplier" in volatile parts of the world. The next day, British Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett hosted the first-ever debate on climate change and armed conflict at the U.N. Security Council. "What makes wars start?" asked Beckett. "Fights over water. Changing patterns of rainfall. Fights over food production, land use. There are few greater potential threats to our economies too ... but also to peace and security itself."
Q: 試翻 "On April 16, ... in volatile parts of the world."
English Quiz 227
(English Quiz 227)
1. Hillary Clinton's Presidential campaign was designed and built to be a dreadnought, an all-big-gun battleship that would rule the waves without being dented, slowed or thrown off course. But it has been caught off guard by a submarine named Barack Obama, running silent, running deep — until he surfaced with a spectacular showing in the first round of fund-raising numbers. What startled Clinton's team was not just Obama's totals or his success at drumming up contributions over the Internet, but also how much he is collecting from the big donors who have fueled Clinton enterprises for the past decade and a half. "It was a real wake-up call," says a Clinton strategist. Clinton's campaign still professes publicly to be unperturbed, maintaining that it never believed the race would be a cakewalk. "The game plan that we began this campaign with is the game plan we are using today," insists spokesman Phil Singer. But Clinton's advisers privately acknowledge that she is retooling her strategy on four fronts: intensifying her fund-raising, emphasizing her experience and policy depth (she's counting on the upcoming debates to put those on display), pondering when and how to go on the offensive against Obama and dusting off the "two for the price of one" theme of her husband's 1992 campaign. But this time it's Bill you would get in the bargain.
Q: 試翻 "Hillary Clinton's Presidential campaign ... thrown off course."
Q: 試翻 "Clinton's campaign still professes ... would be a cakewalk."
2. The fund-raising comes first. As her campaign chairman, Terry McAuliffe, discovered, Obama "works the phones like a dog. He probably did three to four times the number of events she did" in the first quarter. "No matter who I call," McAuliffe says, "he has already called them three or four times." So Clinton is stepping up the pace of her cash raising. Instead of big galas, she will be doing more fund-raisers in smaller settings that offer extra attention from the candidate — especially for those contributors who can pony up the maximum $4,600 total allowed by law for the primary and general elections. Whereas her forces once warned donors that it would be seen as an act of disloyalty to contribute to anyone but Clinton, they are now inviting Obama's fund-raisers to consider hedging their bets by helping her too. And they are reassuring a new and younger generation of fund-raisers that despite the size of her operation, there will be plenty of room at the table for them and their ideas. Also being added are "small dollar" events, like a recent $100-a-head "Party on the Pier" at New York City's Pier 94, which are useful for collecting not only money but also e-mail addresses with which she might blunt the advantage that Obama has on the Internet. Having raised her money largely on the coasts until now, Clinton is going inland. Invitations just went out for a May 7 fund-raiser in Chicago, which is her hometown — and Obama's political turf.
Q: 試翻 "Whereas fer forces ... by helping her too."
3. Bill Clinton will also put in more time on the trail, as well as in smaller sessions with donors and activists. Part of his job has been to make the case that his wife and Obama aren't so different in their records on Iraq: though Obama opposed the Iraq invasion as a Senate candidate, the former President argues, Obama's voting on the war has been virtually identical to Hillary's in the Senate. Bill has "verged on feckless in this respect," grumbles a leading Democratic fund raiser who has defected from the Clinton camp to Obama's. Both Clintons have made the case to potential fund-raisers that the U.S. will probably suffer a terrorist attack on the scale of 9/11 after the next President is sworn in — and that Hillary is the only Democratic candidate capable of handling such a crisis because of her Senate Armed Services Committee tenure and her years in the White House. Hillary Clinton is also banking on the grueling schedule of debates, which is "where she will shine," says a strategist. "This will be her strongest point. She knows this stuff inside out." But her team says she is not yet ready to begin challenging Obama directly on his lack of specificity. That's because going on the attack could further boost her negatives and create an opening for Edwards, who has offered far more detailed plans than she has on issues like health care. "They are worried about both Obama and Edwards," says an outside adviser. "They think if Obama flames out, Edwards rises." And if that happens, Hillary's team will have to consider a course correction once again.
Q: 試翻 "Both Clintons have made ... after the next President is sworn in."
English Quiz 226
(English Quiz 226)
1. The next time someone you know raves about a dish detergent or motor oil, consider this: you might be on the receiving end of a clever marketing campaign. It's a brave new world for people whose job it is to sell you things, what with consumers' TiVo-enabled ability to skip over ads they don't want to see, and their Internet-empowered freedom to find out all the stuff left out of a cheery 30-sec. TV spot. That's driving marketers to all sorts of new places, including your circle of friends--a trend that has produced some surprising intelligence on how word-of-mouth communication really works. Procter & Gamble, a pioneer in the field, has been taking control of word of mouth for six years through its Tremor division, which has enlisted 225,000 teenagers to tell their friends about brands like Herbal Essences and Old Spice. Last year, figuring the strategy could be just as effective with adults, P&G signed up 500,000 volunteers, all mothers, for Vocalpoint, a program in which the moms evangelize about pet food, paper towels and hair color. P&G gives the women marketing materials and coupons, but they are free to say whatever they like (or nothing at all) about the products. BzzAgent, a firm that specializes in word-of-mouth marketing, has its 260,000 volunteers submit detailed profiles about their habits and interests, which BzzAgent uses to match them to word-of-mouth campaigns for products made by companies such as Nestle, Arby's, Philips, Kraft and BP. The so-called agents are provided with information about the clients' products and in return give detailed feedback about the conversations they have.
Q: 試翻 "Last year, ... abd hair color."
2. This unscripted strategy might sound like a big risk--there's nothing stopping the volunteers from saying they hate a product. But despite the conventional wisdom that consumers are much more likely to voice complaints than praise, recent research finds the opposite. In one study, Andrea Wojnicki, an assistant professor of marketing at the University of Toronto, looked at self-styled experts and found that they were likely to keep negative experiences to themselves, lest their skill--at, say, picking a restaurant--be called into question. And why are these citizen marketers so willing to shill for free? "It gives people social currency," says Walter Carl, an assistant professor of communication studies at Northeastern University. Inside access to products and the feeling that companies care about what you and your friends think are such strong motivating forces that other forms of compensation pale in comparison. BzzAgent's members earn reward points, which they can cash in for prizes like DVDs and books--yet 87% of them never do.
Q: 試翻 "This unscripted strategy ... finds the opposite."
Q: 試翻 "Inside access to ... in comparison."
3. Word of mouth has been around for ages--"Try the apple," said Eve--and it continues to prove resilient. Even in the era of MySpace, some 90% of word of mouth still happens off-line, according to research by both P&G and the consultancy Keller Fay Group. Breaking it down, Keller Fay found that 18% of word-of-mouth marketing took place on the phone, and 72% face to face, despite the ubiquity of electronic communication. Or perhaps because of it. Inundated by marketing messages, says Tremor CEO Steve Knox, "consumers have gone back to their most trusted source--family and friends." Naturally, some people aren't happy about marketers' following them there. In 2005 the advocacy group Commercial Alert asked the Federal Trade Commission to investigate company-fed word of mouth and other buzz tactics, which the group says take authentic relationships and unduly commercialize them. Not all firms ask word of mouthers to disclose their corporate connection, but the Word of Mouth Marketing Association requires its 400-odd members to do so as part of its ethics code. There might also be a business case for disclosure, according to Northeastern's Carl. Working with BzzAgent data, he found that agents actually gain credibility by mentioning their affiliation. Word of mouth is built on trust, explains Gerald Zaltman, a sociologist and professor emeritus at Harvard Business School. Fessing up reinforces that. But perhaps the biggest lesson companies can learn from word of mouthers is that there's an unmet social need among consumers to feel that their opinions matter. "They care what you have to say," says Carol Engels, a Vocalpoint mother in suburban Chicago. "That's what I like most." Smart companies find that when they listen, they also get a shot at steering the conversation.
Q: 試翻 "Smart companies ... at steering the conversation."
1. The next time someone you know raves about a dish detergent or motor oil, consider this: you might be on the receiving end of a clever marketing campaign. It's a brave new world for people whose job it is to sell you things, what with consumers' TiVo-enabled ability to skip over ads they don't want to see, and their Internet-empowered freedom to find out all the stuff left out of a cheery 30-sec. TV spot. That's driving marketers to all sorts of new places, including your circle of friends--a trend that has produced some surprising intelligence on how word-of-mouth communication really works. Procter & Gamble, a pioneer in the field, has been taking control of word of mouth for six years through its Tremor division, which has enlisted 225,000 teenagers to tell their friends about brands like Herbal Essences and Old Spice. Last year, figuring the strategy could be just as effective with adults, P&G signed up 500,000 volunteers, all mothers, for Vocalpoint, a program in which the moms evangelize about pet food, paper towels and hair color. P&G gives the women marketing materials and coupons, but they are free to say whatever they like (or nothing at all) about the products. BzzAgent, a firm that specializes in word-of-mouth marketing, has its 260,000 volunteers submit detailed profiles about their habits and interests, which BzzAgent uses to match them to word-of-mouth campaigns for products made by companies such as Nestle, Arby's, Philips, Kraft and BP. The so-called agents are provided with information about the clients' products and in return give detailed feedback about the conversations they have.
Q: 試翻 "Last year, ... abd hair color."
2. This unscripted strategy might sound like a big risk--there's nothing stopping the volunteers from saying they hate a product. But despite the conventional wisdom that consumers are much more likely to voice complaints than praise, recent research finds the opposite. In one study, Andrea Wojnicki, an assistant professor of marketing at the University of Toronto, looked at self-styled experts and found that they were likely to keep negative experiences to themselves, lest their skill--at, say, picking a restaurant--be called into question. And why are these citizen marketers so willing to shill for free? "It gives people social currency," says Walter Carl, an assistant professor of communication studies at Northeastern University. Inside access to products and the feeling that companies care about what you and your friends think are such strong motivating forces that other forms of compensation pale in comparison. BzzAgent's members earn reward points, which they can cash in for prizes like DVDs and books--yet 87% of them never do.
Q: 試翻 "This unscripted strategy ... finds the opposite."
Q: 試翻 "Inside access to ... in comparison."
3. Word of mouth has been around for ages--"Try the apple," said Eve--and it continues to prove resilient. Even in the era of MySpace, some 90% of word of mouth still happens off-line, according to research by both P&G and the consultancy Keller Fay Group. Breaking it down, Keller Fay found that 18% of word-of-mouth marketing took place on the phone, and 72% face to face, despite the ubiquity of electronic communication. Or perhaps because of it. Inundated by marketing messages, says Tremor CEO Steve Knox, "consumers have gone back to their most trusted source--family and friends." Naturally, some people aren't happy about marketers' following them there. In 2005 the advocacy group Commercial Alert asked the Federal Trade Commission to investigate company-fed word of mouth and other buzz tactics, which the group says take authentic relationships and unduly commercialize them. Not all firms ask word of mouthers to disclose their corporate connection, but the Word of Mouth Marketing Association requires its 400-odd members to do so as part of its ethics code. There might also be a business case for disclosure, according to Northeastern's Carl. Working with BzzAgent data, he found that agents actually gain credibility by mentioning their affiliation. Word of mouth is built on trust, explains Gerald Zaltman, a sociologist and professor emeritus at Harvard Business School. Fessing up reinforces that. But perhaps the biggest lesson companies can learn from word of mouthers is that there's an unmet social need among consumers to feel that their opinions matter. "They care what you have to say," says Carol Engels, a Vocalpoint mother in suburban Chicago. "That's what I like most." Smart companies find that when they listen, they also get a shot at steering the conversation.
Q: 試翻 "Smart companies ... at steering the conversation."
English Quiz 225
(English Quiz 225)
1. Dr. Maurizio Bendandi pokes fun at advertising slogans. "Pharmaceutical companies love to say, 'Treating cancer, one patient at a time,'" the 43-year-old observes. "But those companies are mass-producing drugs. We're the ones really doing it." The "we" to whom Bendandi refers are the nine scientists on his team at work on customized cancer vaccines. A treatment that uses a patient's own tumor cells to provoke an immunological response, vaccines are one of the most promising developments in the fight against cancer, and a goal hotly pursued by researchers around the world. Bendandi and his colleagues at Spain's Center for Applied Medical Research and the University of Navarre Hospital have gone farther than most. In a five-year-long study — its results were described as "remarkable" by the Journal of the National Cancer Institute which published the report last September — the Pamplona-based group demonstrated that a customized vaccine could extend, perhaps indefinitely, the cancer-free period for patients with follicular lymphoma. In the wake of that success, Bendandi is preparing another study, one with an even more ambitious goal. A cancer vaccine is not like the measles shot you get as a kid. Instead of inoculating a healthy person against a foreign body like a virus, cancer vaccines use parts of tumors to help the patients' immune systems recognize diseased cells. Follicular lymphoma, a generally slow-moving cancer of the immune system that affects roughly 5,000 Spaniards each year, presents an especially enticing target for vaccine researchers because its cells all carry a protein, called an idiotype, that distinguishes them from their healthy counterparts. Mixing the idiotype with other substances that trigger immunological responses, "the vaccine presents a tumor protein to the patients in such a way that their immune systems recognize it and destroy any cells bearing that protein," explains Larry Kwak, associate director of Cancer Immunology Research at Houston's MD Anderson Cancer Center and a leading vaccine researcher.
Q: 試翻 "A treatment that uses ... around the world."
Q: 試翻 "Follicular lymphoma, ... from their healthy counterparts."
2. Follicular lymphoma cannot currently be cured, but with chemotherapy and other treatments, a patient can usually achieve remission. The cancer almost always returns, however, and each subsequent remission tends to be shorter than the previous one. In 2001, Bendandi began vaccine therapy on 25 patients who had achieved a second remission with chemotherapy. The vaccine did not have any effect on five of the subjects, but the other 20 who did respond received a total of 10 vaccinations over 26 months. "Partway through the study, one of my patients — a hairdresser — came to me and said, 'I know the treatment is working,'" Bendandi recounts. "I asked her how she knew, because I had nothing conclusive yet. She said she knew because her first remission lasted 18 months, and her second remission had just reached 19 months." In fact, none of the 20 subjects relapsed while receiving the vaccine, and all had remissions that lasted significantly longer than their previous ones. Indeed, although the average second remission in follicular lymphoma lasts 13 months (in comparison with an average first remission of about two years), only a few of Bendandi's patients have relapsed since the vaccines stopped. All the rest are still in remission — including three who have been cancer free over five years. In addition to showing that the vaccine can prolong remission, Bendandi's trial attempted to solve the long-standing problem of quantifying the results of custom-made treatments. Advanced drug trials require a control group, one whose members share key characteristics with those in the experimental arm, but who receive a placebo or another treatment rather than the one under study. According to Bendandi, randomized testing of custom-made vaccines would be meaningless because each patient in the experimental arm receives a different treatment. So he set about proving efficacy in another way. "The course of the study design was the first innovation," writes Dr. Dan Longo in an editorial appearing in the same journal that published Bendandi's study. "Each patient would be his or her own control. Second remissions longer than first would be an indication of therapeutic effect."
Q: 試翻 "Advanced drug trials require ... rather than the one under study."
3. Not everyone is convinced by that logic. Dr. Robert Schwartz, an editor at the New England Journal of Medicine, says, "Using patients as their own control is a bit shaky, especially for follicular lymphoma." A Phase III randomized trial, more difficult but still possible to conduct even with customized vaccines remains, he says, "the gold standard for proof of efficacy." Dr. Kwak, who is conducting his own Phase III trial of a vaccine for the American pharmaceutical company Biovest, believes his former trainee's results support the case for a therapeutic lymphoma vaccine, but is skeptical about his methods. "Dr. Bendandi's study is important because it confirms previously reported results. But taken in isolation, it's a small study with no control group. It's not definitive." Bendandi's vaccine also faces challenges common to other customized treatments: it's expensive (an estimated $34,000 per patient), it's difficult to make, and not all pharmaceutical companies (which make profits by mass-producing drugs) are able — or willing — to take on the work of producing a different vaccine for every patient. But with three Phase III clinical trials for idiotype vaccines under way in the U.S., and several other types of custom treatments in development (on March 29, an fda advisory committee found "substantial evidence" that a prostate cancer vaccine is effective, increasing the likelihood of its approval), hopes for cancer vaccines are running high.
English Quiz 224
(English Quiz 224)
1. Imus argued repeatedly that his critics should consider the "context" of his larger life, including the formidable work for sick children he does through his Imus Ranch charity. But it's not Imus Ranch he broadcasts from 20 hours a week. You can't totally separate the lives of celebrities from their work — it didn't excuse Gibson that he attacked the Jews in his free time — but finally what determines who can make what jokes is the context of their work: the tone of their acts, the personas they present, the vehicles they create for their work. That context is not as kind to Imus. He comes out of the shock jock tradition, but all shock jocks are not created equal. If Opie & Anthony or Mancow had made the "nappy-headed" comment, it wouldn't have been a blip because future Presidents do not do cable-news interviews with Opie & Anthony and Mancow. Then there's personality, or at least persona. Compared with Imus, for instance, his rival Howard Stern may be offensive, but he's also self-deprecating, making fun of his own satyrism, looks and even manly endowment. Imus doesn't take it nearly as well as he dishes it out. His shtick is all cowboy-hatted swagger, and his insults set him up as superior to his targets and the alpha dog to his supplicant guests.
Q: 試翻 "compared with Imus, ... leven manly endowment."
2. Imus uses jokes to establish his power, in other words. He's hardly the only humorist to do that. But making jokes about difference — race, gender, sexual orientation, the whole list — is ultimately about power. You need to purchase the right to do it through some form of vulnerability, especially if you happen to be a rich, famous white man. But the I-Man — his radio persona, anyway — is not about vulnerability. (The nickname, for Pete's sake: I, Man!) That's creepy enough when he's having a big-name columnist kiss his ring; when he hurled his tinfoil thunderbolts at a team of college kids, it was too much. "Some people have said, 'Well, he says this all the time,'" Rutgers' team captain Carson told TIME. "But does that justify the remarks he's made about anyone?" Of course, assessing Imus' show is a subjective judgment, and setting these boundaries is as much an aesthetic call as a moral one. It's arbitrary, nebulous and, yes, unfair. Who doesn't have a list of artists or leaders whose sins they rationalize: Elvis Costello for calling Ray Charles a "blind, ignorant nigger," Eminem for peppering his lyrics with "faggot," Jesse Jackson for "Hymietown," D.W. Griffith for lionizing the Klan or T.S. Eliot for maligning Jews?
Q: 試翻 "Of course, ... a moral one."
3. You might say that there's no excuse and that I'm as big a hypocrite as Imus' defenders for suggesting that there is one. Which may be true. That's finally why "Where's the line?" is a misleading question. There are as many lines as there are people. We draw and redraw them by constantly arguing them. This is how we avoid throwing out the brilliance of a Sacha Baron Cohen — who offends us to point out absurdities in our society, not just to make "idiot comments meant to be amusing" — with a shock jock's dirty bathwater. It's a draining, polarizing but necessary process. Which may be why it was such a catharsis to see the Rutgers players respond to Imus at their press conference in their own words. "I'm a woman, and I'm someone's child," said Kia Vaughn. "I achieve a lot. And unless they've given this name, a 'ho,' a new definition, then that is not what I am." She stood with her teammates, a row of unbowed, confident women. For a few minutes, anyway, they drew a line we could all agree on and formed a line we could all get behind.
Q: 試翻 "You might sat that ... that there is one."
English Quiz 223
(English Quiz 223)
1. The flip side of the instant-attention era is the gotcha era. We may be more inured to shock than ever, but when someone manages to find and cross a line, we're better able to generate, spread and sustain offense. You get eaten by the same tiger that you train. Imus got special love from the media over the years because his show was such a media hangout. But when the controversy erupted, it snowballed in part because the media love to cover the media. Every public figure — athlete, pundit, actor — now has two audiences: the one he or she is addressing and the one that will eventually read the blogs or see the viral video. A few have adapted, like Stephen Colbert, whose routine at last year's White House Correspondents' Association dinner was decried by attendees as rude and shrill — but made him a hero to his YouTube audience. Imus, a 30-plus-year veteran of radio shock, seemed to underestimate the power of the modern umbrage-amplification machine. The day after his remarks, Imus said dismissively on air that people needed to relax about "some idiot comment meant to be amusing." Shockingly, they did not, and by the next day, Imus had tapped an inner wellspring of deepest regret.
Q: 試翻 "We may be more inured to ... to generate, spread and sustain offense."
2. As in so many scandals, the first response may have been the most authentic — at least we're inclined to take it that way because the contrition cycle has become so familiar. You blurt. You deny. You apologize. You visit the rehab center or speak with the Official Minority Spokesperson of your choice and go on with your life. Although — or maybe because — it's so easy to get caught today, it's also easier to get forgiven. In 1988 Jimmy (the Greek) Snyder was fired by CBS for saying black athletes were "bred" to be better than whites. In 1996 CBS golf analyst Ben Wright was suspended indefinitely after he was quoted as saying that lesbians had hurt the sport. To his credit, Imus never played the "I'm sick" card. Perhaps he felt confident because he had been legitimized by his high-profile guests. Imus could have made a remark just as bad years ago and suffered few if any consequences. Scratch that: Imus did make remarks as bad or worse for years. Speaking about Gwen Ifill, the African-American PBS anchor who was then White House correspondent for the New York Times, he said, "Isn't the Times wonderful? It lets the cleaning lady cover the White House." He called a Washington Post writer a "boner-nosed, beanie-wearing Jewboy" and Arabs "towelheads."
Q: 試翻 "As in so many scandals, ... has become so familiar."
Q: 試翻 "Imus could have made a remark ... suffered few if any consequences."
3. Yet politicians and journalists (including TIME writers) still went on his show to plug their candidacies and books because Imus knew how to sell. "If Don Imus likes a book," says Katie Wainwright, executive director of publicity at publisher Hyperion, "not only does he have the author on, he will talk about it before, during and after, often for weeks afterwards." The price: implicitly telling America that the mostly white male Beltway elite is cool with looking the other way at racism. They compartmentalized the lengthy interviews he did with them from the "bad" parts of the show, though the boundary was always a little porous. And evidently many still do. "Solidarity forever," pledged Boston Globe columnist Tom Oliphant in a phone interview with Imus on April 9. Senator John McCain and Rudolph Giuliani said they would return to the show. "I called him a little while ago to talk to him about it personally," Giuliani told the New York Times. "And I believe that he understands that he made a very big mistake." (Senator Barack Obama, who appeared on the show once, has said he will not go back; other politicians have hedged.) In fact, while there might be more media and blogger scrutiny of Imus' future guests, his suspension may have inoculated them — if his radio show survives. The show draws 2 million daily listeners, and it's a more valuable property on radio than it was on TV. (It brings in about $15 million annually for CBS Radio compared with several million for MSNBC.) But the show has already lost advertisers, including American Express, Staples and Procter & Gamble.
Q: 試翻 "The price: ... with looking the other way at racism."
1. The flip side of the instant-attention era is the gotcha era. We may be more inured to shock than ever, but when someone manages to find and cross a line, we're better able to generate, spread and sustain offense. You get eaten by the same tiger that you train. Imus got special love from the media over the years because his show was such a media hangout. But when the controversy erupted, it snowballed in part because the media love to cover the media. Every public figure — athlete, pundit, actor — now has two audiences: the one he or she is addressing and the one that will eventually read the blogs or see the viral video. A few have adapted, like Stephen Colbert, whose routine at last year's White House Correspondents' Association dinner was decried by attendees as rude and shrill — but made him a hero to his YouTube audience. Imus, a 30-plus-year veteran of radio shock, seemed to underestimate the power of the modern umbrage-amplification machine. The day after his remarks, Imus said dismissively on air that people needed to relax about "some idiot comment meant to be amusing." Shockingly, they did not, and by the next day, Imus had tapped an inner wellspring of deepest regret.
Q: 試翻 "We may be more inured to ... to generate, spread and sustain offense."
2. As in so many scandals, the first response may have been the most authentic — at least we're inclined to take it that way because the contrition cycle has become so familiar. You blurt. You deny. You apologize. You visit the rehab center or speak with the Official Minority Spokesperson of your choice and go on with your life. Although — or maybe because — it's so easy to get caught today, it's also easier to get forgiven. In 1988 Jimmy (the Greek) Snyder was fired by CBS for saying black athletes were "bred" to be better than whites. In 1996 CBS golf analyst Ben Wright was suspended indefinitely after he was quoted as saying that lesbians had hurt the sport. To his credit, Imus never played the "I'm sick" card. Perhaps he felt confident because he had been legitimized by his high-profile guests. Imus could have made a remark just as bad years ago and suffered few if any consequences. Scratch that: Imus did make remarks as bad or worse for years. Speaking about Gwen Ifill, the African-American PBS anchor who was then White House correspondent for the New York Times, he said, "Isn't the Times wonderful? It lets the cleaning lady cover the White House." He called a Washington Post writer a "boner-nosed, beanie-wearing Jewboy" and Arabs "towelheads."
Q: 試翻 "As in so many scandals, ... has become so familiar."
Q: 試翻 "Imus could have made a remark ... suffered few if any consequences."
3. Yet politicians and journalists (including TIME writers) still went on his show to plug their candidacies and books because Imus knew how to sell. "If Don Imus likes a book," says Katie Wainwright, executive director of publicity at publisher Hyperion, "not only does he have the author on, he will talk about it before, during and after, often for weeks afterwards." The price: implicitly telling America that the mostly white male Beltway elite is cool with looking the other way at racism. They compartmentalized the lengthy interviews he did with them from the "bad" parts of the show, though the boundary was always a little porous. And evidently many still do. "Solidarity forever," pledged Boston Globe columnist Tom Oliphant in a phone interview with Imus on April 9. Senator John McCain and Rudolph Giuliani said they would return to the show. "I called him a little while ago to talk to him about it personally," Giuliani told the New York Times. "And I believe that he understands that he made a very big mistake." (Senator Barack Obama, who appeared on the show once, has said he will not go back; other politicians have hedged.) In fact, while there might be more media and blogger scrutiny of Imus' future guests, his suspension may have inoculated them — if his radio show survives. The show draws 2 million daily listeners, and it's a more valuable property on radio than it was on TV. (It brings in about $15 million annually for CBS Radio compared with several million for MSNBC.) But the show has already lost advertisers, including American Express, Staples and Procter & Gamble.
Q: 試翻 "The price: ... with looking the other way at racism."
English Quiz 222
(English Quiz 222)
1. Imus crossed a line, boorishly, creepily, paleolithically. But where is that line nowadays? In a way, the question is an outgrowth of something healthy in our society: the assumption that there is a diverse audience that is willing to talk about previously taboo social distinctions more openly, frankly and daringly than before. It used to be assumed that people were free to joke about their own kind (with some license for black comedians to talk about how white people dance). Crossing those lines was the province of the occasional "socially conscious artist," like Dick Gregory or Lenny Bruce, who was explicit about his goals: in Bruce's words, to repeat "'niggerniggernigger' until the word [didn't] mean anything anymore." Now, however, we live in a mash-up world, where people — especially young people — feel free to borrow one another's cultural signifiers. In a now classic episode of Chappelle's Show, comic Dave Chappelle plays a blind, black white supremacist who inadvertently calls a carload of rap-listening white boys "niggers." The kids' reaction: "Did he just call us niggers? Awesome!" The country is, at least, more pop-culturally integrated — one nation under Jessica Alba, J. Lo and Harold & Kumar — and with that comes greater comfort in talking about differences.
Q: 試翻 "In a way, ... more openly, frankly and daringly than before."
2. But that's a harder attitude for older people — who grew up with more cultural and actual segregation — to accept or to mimic. Part of the problem with Imus' joke was that it was so tone-deaf. "That's some rough girls from Rutgers," he said. "Man, they got tattoos ... That's some nappy-headed hos there." The joke played badly in every community, raising memories of beauty bias (against darker skin and kinkier hair) that dates back to slavery. Tracy Riley, 37, of Des Moines, Iowa, who is of mixed race, said the incident was among her four kids' first exposures to overt racism. "Our kids don't see color the way we do," she said. "They don't see it as much. 'You're my friend or not,' but it's not about race.'" The line was as damning as anything for what it suggested about Imus' thought process: a 66-year-old white male country-music fan rummaging in his subconscious for something to suggest that some young black women looked scary, and coming up with a reference to African-American hair and a random piece of rap slang. (Maybe because older, male media honchos are more conscious of — and thus fixated on — race than gender, much of the coverage of Imus ignored the sexual part of the slur on a show with a locker-room vibe and a mostly male guest list. If Imus had said "niggas" rather than "hos," would his bosses have waited as long to act?)
Q: 試翻 "Maybe because older, ... a mostly male list."
3. So who gets to say "ho," in an age when Pimp My Ride is an innocent car show and It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp is an Oscar-winning song? As even Essence Carlson, one of the Rutgers students Imus insulted, acknowledged at a press conference, black rap artists labeled young black women as "hos" long before Imus did. And while straight people may not be able to say "faggot," Queer Eye for the Straight Guy and Will & Grace helped mainstream the nonhostile gay joke for straight people. But all this reappropriation and blurring — distinguishing a good-natured "That's so gay!" from a homophobic one — has created a situation in which, when Richards went off on his Laugh Factory rant, it was possible to wonder if he was playing a character. The license to borrow terms other people have taken back can worry even edgy comics. A few months ago, I interviewed Silverman, who argued that her material was not racist but about racism (and I agree). But she added something that surprised me, coming from her: "I'm not saying 'I can say nigger because I'm liberal.' There is a certain aspect of that that I'm starting to get grossed out by. 'Oh, we're not racist. We can say it.'" Comedians work through these danger zones in the presence of other comics. In a comedians' get-together or a TV writers' room, nothing is off-limits: without airing the joke that goes too far, you can never get to the joke that flies in front of an audience. Trouble might come if material meant for that smaller audience went public, as in 1993, when Ted Danson got in trouble after word got out of a Friars Club routine he did in blackface, though his jokes were defended — and reportedly written by — his then girlfriend Whoopi Goldberg.
Q: 試翻 "The license to borrow terms ... even edgy comics."
Q: 試翻 "In a comedian's get-together ... in front of an audience."
English Quiz 221
(English Quiz 221)
1. Say this for Don Imus: the man knows how to turn an economical phrase. When the radio shock jock described the Rutgers women's basketball team, on the April 4 Imus in the Morning, as "nappy-headed hos," he packed so many layers of offense into the statement that it was like a perfect little diamond of insult. There was a racial element, a gender element and even a class element (the joke implied that the Scarlet Knights were thuggish and ghetto compared with the Tennessee Lady Vols). Imus was a famous, rich, old white man picking on a bunch of young, mostly black college women. So it seemed pretty cut-and-dried that his bosses at CBS Radio would suspend his show — half frat party, half political salon for the Beltway elite — for two weeks, and that MSNBC would cancel the TV simulcast. And that Imus would plan to meet with the students he offended. Case closed, justice served, lesson —possibly — learned. Move on.
Q: 試翻 "So it seemed ... cancel the TV simulcast."
2. But a reasonable person could ask, What was the big deal? And I don't mean the lots-of-black-rappers-say-"hos" argument, though we'll get to that. Rather, I mean, what celebrity isn't slurring some group nowadays? I exaggerate slightly. But our culture has experienced an almost psychotic outburst of -isms in the past year. Michael Richards and "nigger." Isaiah Washington and "faggot." Senator George Allen and "macaca." Mel Gibson and "f__ing Jews." But we also live in a culture in which racially and sexually edgy material is often — legitimately — considered brilliant comment, even art. Last year's most critically praised comedy, Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, won Sacha Baron Cohen a Golden Globe for playing a Kazakh journalist who calls Alan Keyes a "genuine chocolate face" and asks a gun-shop owner to suggest a good piece for killing a Jew. Quentin Tarantino has made a career borrowing tropes from blaxploitation movies. In the critics-favorite sitcom The Sarah Silverman Program, the star sleeps with God, who is African American and who she assumes is "God's black friend." And the current season of South Park opened with an episode about a Michael Richards-esque controversy erupting when a character blurts the word niggers on Wheel of Fortune. (He answers a puzzle — N-GGERS — for which the clue is "People who annoy you"; the correct answer is "naggers.")
Q: 試翻 "And the current reason ... the correct answer is "naggers.""
3. This is not to say that Borat made Imus do it or to make excuses for Imus. Even in the midst of his apology tour last week, Imus did enough of that for himself, citing his charity work, his support of black Senate candidate Harold Ford Jr., even his booking the black singing group Blind Boys of Alabama on his show. (He didn't mention how, last fall, he groused about persuading the "money grubbing" "Jewish management" to okay the booking.) But in the middle of his stunning medley of sneer, apology and rationalization, Imus asked a pretty good question: "This phrase that I use, it originated in the black community. That didn't give me a right to use it, but that's where it originated. Who calls who that and why? We need to know that. I need to know that."
Q: 試翻 "But in the middle of ... asked a pretty good question."
1. Say this for Don Imus: the man knows how to turn an economical phrase. When the radio shock jock described the Rutgers women's basketball team, on the April 4 Imus in the Morning, as "nappy-headed hos," he packed so many layers of offense into the statement that it was like a perfect little diamond of insult. There was a racial element, a gender element and even a class element (the joke implied that the Scarlet Knights were thuggish and ghetto compared with the Tennessee Lady Vols). Imus was a famous, rich, old white man picking on a bunch of young, mostly black college women. So it seemed pretty cut-and-dried that his bosses at CBS Radio would suspend his show — half frat party, half political salon for the Beltway elite — for two weeks, and that MSNBC would cancel the TV simulcast. And that Imus would plan to meet with the students he offended. Case closed, justice served, lesson —possibly — learned. Move on.
Q: 試翻 "So it seemed ... cancel the TV simulcast."
2. But a reasonable person could ask, What was the big deal? And I don't mean the lots-of-black-rappers-say-"hos" argument, though we'll get to that. Rather, I mean, what celebrity isn't slurring some group nowadays? I exaggerate slightly. But our culture has experienced an almost psychotic outburst of -isms in the past year. Michael Richards and "nigger." Isaiah Washington and "faggot." Senator George Allen and "macaca." Mel Gibson and "f__ing Jews." But we also live in a culture in which racially and sexually edgy material is often — legitimately — considered brilliant comment, even art. Last year's most critically praised comedy, Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, won Sacha Baron Cohen a Golden Globe for playing a Kazakh journalist who calls Alan Keyes a "genuine chocolate face" and asks a gun-shop owner to suggest a good piece for killing a Jew. Quentin Tarantino has made a career borrowing tropes from blaxploitation movies. In the critics-favorite sitcom The Sarah Silverman Program, the star sleeps with God, who is African American and who she assumes is "God's black friend." And the current season of South Park opened with an episode about a Michael Richards-esque controversy erupting when a character blurts the word niggers on Wheel of Fortune. (He answers a puzzle — N-GGERS — for which the clue is "People who annoy you"; the correct answer is "naggers.")
Q: 試翻 "And the current reason ... the correct answer is "naggers.""
3. This is not to say that Borat made Imus do it or to make excuses for Imus. Even in the midst of his apology tour last week, Imus did enough of that for himself, citing his charity work, his support of black Senate candidate Harold Ford Jr., even his booking the black singing group Blind Boys of Alabama on his show. (He didn't mention how, last fall, he groused about persuading the "money grubbing" "Jewish management" to okay the booking.) But in the middle of his stunning medley of sneer, apology and rationalization, Imus asked a pretty good question: "This phrase that I use, it originated in the black community. That didn't give me a right to use it, but that's where it originated. Who calls who that and why? We need to know that. I need to know that."
Q: 試翻 "But in the middle of ... asked a pretty good question."
English Quiz 220
(English Quiz 220)
1. The Army's problems were long in the making, and the extended deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan have exposed them for all to see: more than a decade of underfunding for boots on the ground while cold war administrations from Richard Nixon's to Bill Clinton's spent lavishly on the Pentagon's high-tech wizardry. The first Gulf War didn't help. It lasted 100 hours on the ground, was fought mainly from the air and reinforced the impression that grunts matter less than geeks.
Q: 試翻 "The Army's problems ... Pentagon's high-tech wizardy."
2. Today's Army was molded for peacetime missions, with occasional spasms of all-out war, not for the lengthy guerrilla campaigns it is waging. "Following Vietnam, a lot of thoughtful officers said, This is not the kind of war that we want to fight," explains Senator Jack Reed, Democrat of Rhode Island, a Vietnam-era Army officer. Counterinsurgency wars didn't play to the U.S.'s strong suit — superior technology — and instead demanded patience, which is harder to come by in this culture. Even now, more than four years after invading Iraq, the Pentagon seems to be investing much of its current $606 billion budget in an effort to fight the wrong war. America's potential enemies around the world watched the first Gulf War and learned that the U.S. was unbeatable on a conventional battlefield. But the Defense Department lingered in a cold war hangover. The Air Force continues to buy $330 million fighters, and the Navy $2 billion submarines. (The Army is not free of this tendency. It wants to spend $160 billion on the Future Combat System, a network of 14 ground vehicles and drones of questionable value in the irregular warfare that's likely in the 21st century.) Gates has second-guessed the Pentagon's spending priorities and says he is studying whether the Defense Department is buying weapons "more tied to cold war needs than future needs." Even John Abizaid, the outgoing Army general who commanded the troops fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq for the past three years, acknowledges that he never had the right tools for his mission. "This is not an Army that was built to sustain a long war," he told a Harvard audience last fall. The force was so stretched, he warned Congress at the time, that a 20,000-strong troop surge in Iraq could not be sustained. Now that Abizaid is no longer in command, Bush has ordered 30,000 more troops into the fight.
Q: 試翻 "Today's Army was molded for ... it is waging."
3. Those in charge deny there's a crisis. Schoomaker, the Army's top general, served in the Vietnam-era Army. "I know what an Army that's near broken smells like, what it looks like, how it acts," he said in January. "Drug problems, race problems, insubordination — all kinds of things going on. We're nowhere near anything like that." General George Casey, who will succeed Schoomaker as the Army's top officer April 10, said at his confirmation hearing that "the Army is far from broken." The top brass acknowledge that they have had to husband their resources, pushing soldiers and supplies into combat and shortchanging everything else left behind. But a detailed look at the Army's people and its gear shows that the institution is barely holding together.
Q: 試翻 "the top brass acknowledged ... everything else left behind."
4. Nearly 5,000 soldiers and their supporters met recently in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., at a gathering of the Association of the U.S. Army, a pro-Army group. A retired general spoke privately of a disconcerting change in recent months in the wounded soldiers he visits at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. "Ever since the war started, they'd be saying all they wanted to do was to get back to their buddies in Iraq to keep on fighting," he said. "Now it's more about getting out and wondering about civilian jobs. There's very little chatter about rejoining the unit." That kind of frontline report unnerves the Army's high command. While they acknowledge that equipment shortfalls and faulty plans have plagued the Iraq campaign, they have always been able to parry such concerns by pointing to G.I.s — including those wounded in action—who believe in the war and are gung-ho to reenlist. The soldiers' change of heart is reflected in a poll by the independent Army Times. In December, for the first time, more troops surveyed disapproved of the President's handling of the war (42%) than approved of it (35%). Over the past two years, the number of troops surveyed who think victory is likely has fallen from 83% to 50%. Army suicides, an admittedly rough barometer of morale, show a steady increase, rising from 51 confirmed in 2001 to 91 (plus seven possible suicides still under investigation) last year. Desertions are climbing.
Q: 試翻 "Army suicides, ... last year."
English Quiz 219
(English Quiz 219)
1. Bush warned that if Democrats in Congress did not pass a bill to fund the war on his terms, "the price of that failure will be paid by our troops and their loved ones." But they are already paying a price for decisions he has made, and the larger costs are likely to be borne for at least a generation. This is not only a matter of the U.S.'s ability to defend itself at home and protect its interests overseas, vital though those missions are. The Army is the heart of the U.S. military, practicing what democracies sometimes manage only to preach. All soldiers are created equal; race and class defer to rank and merit. Except for the stars, the general wears the uniform of the private in combat. The Army is the public institution that sets the pace for others to follow, makes the stakes higher, the demands greater. Its rewards are paid in glory and blood.
Q: 試翻 "This is not only a matter ... those missions are."
Q: 試翻 "The Army is the heart of ... only to preach."
2. A volunteer Army reflects the most central and sacred vow that citizens make to one another: soldiers protect and defend the country; in return, the country promises to give them the tools they need to complete their mission and honor their service, whatever the outcome. It was Bush, on the eve of the 2000 election, who promised "to all of our men and women in uniform and to their parents and to their families, help is on the way." Besides putting Powell at State, the President reinforced his Administration with two former Defense Secretaries: Vice President Dick Cheney and, in the job for a second time, Donald Rumsfeld. So it is no small irony that today's U.S. Army finds itself under the greatest strain in a generation. The Pentagon made that clear April 2 when it announced that two Army units will soon return to Iraq without even a year at home, compared with the two years units have traditionally enjoyed. One is headed back after 47 days short of a year, the other 81. "This is the first time we've had a voluntary Army on an extended deployment," says Andrew Krepinevich, a retired Army officer who advises his old service. "A lot of canaries are dropping dead in the mine."
Q: 試翻 "So it is no small irony ... in a generation."
3. Today half the Army's 43 combat brigades are deployed overseas, with the remainder recovering from their latest deployment or preparing for the next one. For the first time in decades, the Army's "ready brigade" — a unit of the famed 82nd Airborne Division primed to parachute into a hot spot anywhere in the world within 72 hours — is a luxury the U.S. Army cannot afford. All its forces are already dedicated to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Repeated combat tours have "a huge impact on families," General Peter Schoomaker, the Army chief of staff, told Congress in February. Those deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan more than once — 170,000 so far — have a 50% increase in acute combat stress over those who have been deployed only once. And that stress is what contributes to post-traumatic stress disorder, according to an Army study. "Their wives are saying, I know you're proud of what you're doing, but we've got to get out of here," says Barry McCaffrey, a retired four-star general. New Defense Secretary Robert Gates concedes there are readiness problems. He told Congress March 29 that next year's proposed $625 billion defense budget—the highest, adjusted for inflation, since World War II—will "make a good start at addressing the readiness" issues plaguing the Army. His first concern before taking the post in December was his suspicion "that our ground forces weren't large enough," and he has urged troop hikes starting next year.
Q: 試翻 "He told Congress ... issues plaguing the Army."
1. Bush warned that if Democrats in Congress did not pass a bill to fund the war on his terms, "the price of that failure will be paid by our troops and their loved ones." But they are already paying a price for decisions he has made, and the larger costs are likely to be borne for at least a generation. This is not only a matter of the U.S.'s ability to defend itself at home and protect its interests overseas, vital though those missions are. The Army is the heart of the U.S. military, practicing what democracies sometimes manage only to preach. All soldiers are created equal; race and class defer to rank and merit. Except for the stars, the general wears the uniform of the private in combat. The Army is the public institution that sets the pace for others to follow, makes the stakes higher, the demands greater. Its rewards are paid in glory and blood.
Q: 試翻 "This is not only a matter ... those missions are."
Q: 試翻 "The Army is the heart of ... only to preach."
2. A volunteer Army reflects the most central and sacred vow that citizens make to one another: soldiers protect and defend the country; in return, the country promises to give them the tools they need to complete their mission and honor their service, whatever the outcome. It was Bush, on the eve of the 2000 election, who promised "to all of our men and women in uniform and to their parents and to their families, help is on the way." Besides putting Powell at State, the President reinforced his Administration with two former Defense Secretaries: Vice President Dick Cheney and, in the job for a second time, Donald Rumsfeld. So it is no small irony that today's U.S. Army finds itself under the greatest strain in a generation. The Pentagon made that clear April 2 when it announced that two Army units will soon return to Iraq without even a year at home, compared with the two years units have traditionally enjoyed. One is headed back after 47 days short of a year, the other 81. "This is the first time we've had a voluntary Army on an extended deployment," says Andrew Krepinevich, a retired Army officer who advises his old service. "A lot of canaries are dropping dead in the mine."
Q: 試翻 "So it is no small irony ... in a generation."
3. Today half the Army's 43 combat brigades are deployed overseas, with the remainder recovering from their latest deployment or preparing for the next one. For the first time in decades, the Army's "ready brigade" — a unit of the famed 82nd Airborne Division primed to parachute into a hot spot anywhere in the world within 72 hours — is a luxury the U.S. Army cannot afford. All its forces are already dedicated to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Repeated combat tours have "a huge impact on families," General Peter Schoomaker, the Army chief of staff, told Congress in February. Those deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan more than once — 170,000 so far — have a 50% increase in acute combat stress over those who have been deployed only once. And that stress is what contributes to post-traumatic stress disorder, according to an Army study. "Their wives are saying, I know you're proud of what you're doing, but we've got to get out of here," says Barry McCaffrey, a retired four-star general. New Defense Secretary Robert Gates concedes there are readiness problems. He told Congress March 29 that next year's proposed $625 billion defense budget—the highest, adjusted for inflation, since World War II—will "make a good start at addressing the readiness" issues plaguing the Army. His first concern before taking the post in December was his suspicion "that our ground forces weren't large enough," and he has urged troop hikes starting next year.
Q: 試翻 "He told Congress ... issues plaguing the Army."
English Quiz 218
(English Quiz 218)
1. China is usually the first nation to protest—loudly—any perceived backsliding by Japan on its acceptance of guilt for World War II abuses. Yet, last month, when Prime Minister Shinzo Abe denied Japan's wartime army had forced tens of thousands of Asian women into sexual slavery, igniting an international furor, Beijing stayed conspicuously quiet. China's diplomatic silence was the latest sign of an unexpected thaw in the two nations' often icy relationship. The change began with Abe's own surprise trip to Beijing last October, which established lines of communication that had been all but ruined by former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's repeated trips to the Yasukuni Shrine, a Shinto memorial to Japan's war dead viewed by many nations as an irredeemable symbol of Japanese imperialism. For Abe, who had a nationalist reputation as a legislator, the move assuaged worries that ties with China would further degrade under his administration. For the leaders in Beijing, Abe's visit was an opportunity to show that China could be forward thinking, and not just a prisoner of history. Since then the two nations have toned down the hostile rhetoric and found patches of common ground—like stopping North Korea's nuclear program. The good vibes culminated with Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao's trip to Japan on April 11 to 13, the first high-level Chinese visit in nearly seven years. But while it was all smiles and bows in Tokyo this week, China and Japan remain wary rivals at best. "The two sides realized they hadn't talked with each other for years, and that simply wasn't sustainable," says Malcolm Cook, director of the Asia Pacific Program at Sydney's Lowy Institute for International Policy. "There isn't much more than that right now."
Q: 試翻 "China is usually ... for World War II abuses."
Q: 試翻 "Since then the two nations ... like stopping North Korea's nuclear program."
2. That the superficial rapprochement between China and Japan seems so momentous is a measure of just how far apart the neighbors have drifted. They still face a host of problems, from disputed borders to deep-seated animosity over the memory of World War II. Take security. Abe has upgraded Japan's Defense Agency to a Cabinet-level ministry, sped deployment of American ballistic missile-defense systems on Japanese soil, and is pushing for a revision of the country's pacifist constitution. Last month, after Japan signed a defense agreement with Australia, Abe spoke of the two democracies' "shared destiny." And given Japan's flirtations with another powerful Asian democracy (India), you can see why Beijing might think it's on the wrong side of a Japanese containment policy. Tokyo, for its part, points to China's rapidly increasing military spending, which rose nearly 18% to reach $45 billion officially this year—even as Japan's own defense budget, for all of Abe's posturing, has remained virtually flat. The point is that while both nations want what one Tokyo official calls a "future-oriented relationship," the future will likely find them on opposite strategic sides. That doesn't mean they can't be good neighbors—good fences and all that—but we can expect friction.
Q: 試翻 "That the superficial rapprochement ... have drifted."
3. Beijing and Tokyo should focus on confidence-building measures in areas where both can win—like the environment. China's rapid industrialization and inefficient energy use have created a horrific pollution problem. Japan has coped with similar problems in the past to become one of the world's most efficient energy users; its expertise in this field could be of great benefit to China. Expanding the two nations' already robust economic ties—bilateral trade passed $200 billion last year—will bind them further. "Japanese officials realize that China is Japan's economic future," says Jeff Kingston, a professor of history at Temple University in Tokyo. "The mutual interest is real." Mutual interest may not be enough. Though China has downplayed Abe's recent attempts to rewrite Japan's wartime history, Yasukuni remains a redline for Beijing. Eventually Abe will come under pressure from his conservative base to stand up to China, as Koizumi did, and visit Yasukuni. At the same time the Chinese government could face anger at home should it be seen as playing too nice with Tokyo. The past is never really past in Asia, but Japan and China have enough genuine challenges in front of them without being weighed down by what's behind.
Q: 試翻 "At the same time ... by what's behind."
2007年7月5日 星期四
Understanding Computer Technology
2007年6月27日 星期三
Soft-core vs. Hard-core
昨天向一位同事請教一些我也不知道算是電子學還是VLSI方面的問題.其實我一開始問的是"什麼是Soft-core",不過熱心的他竟然從CMOS開始跟我解釋,然後是gate logic,然後是RTL,然後是netlist,然後是mask...
做人就是別太鐵齒.以前我大學時就是最討厭和電路有關的東西,只要是和電路有關的課都是低空掠過,只有把層次拉高到architecture時才覺得親切許多.當時的想法主要是: 管你low-level的雜七雜八細節,全給我abstract好往上拉就好了! 不過很多時候,abstraction不好做,別人做好的你也未必信得過啊...該學的東西就還是乖乖學一學吧...
再次感謝我的熱心同事!
參考圖:
http://www.techweb.com/encyclopedia/defineterm.jhtml?term=softcore
做人就是別太鐵齒.以前我大學時就是最討厭和電路有關的東西,只要是和電路有關的課都是低空掠過,只有把層次拉高到architecture時才覺得親切許多.當時的想法主要是: 管你low-level的雜七雜八細節,全給我abstract好往上拉就好了! 不過很多時候,abstraction不好做,別人做好的你也未必信得過啊...該學的東西就還是乖乖學一學吧...
再次感謝我的熱心同事!
參考圖:
http://www.techweb.com/encyclopedia/defineterm.jhtml?term=softcore
2007年6月7日 星期四
Unix核心 介紹
http://bbs.nsysu.edu.tw/txtVersion/treasure/linux/M.1013884061.A.html
我同事多年前寫的一篇文章,應該算是讀書心得筆記吧.沒想到他竟對Unix系統如此熟悉,實在是相當驚人.
另外,我也覺得年紀真是有差,像我這個年紀的人,如果是上大學才開始接觸電腦,大概十之八九都成了Windows的奴隸了.前兩天他問我能否說出五個OS,我的答案是: 95, 98, 2000, ME, XP (真是近乎腦殘的答案!)
PS. 後來我還跟他說,相較於他那篇文章的第一句"在出國前, 送給陪伴我大學四年的TAnet & UNIX...",我的版本則是"在出國前, 送給陪伴我大學四年的HiNet & Windoes..." (再次腦殘!)
我同事多年前寫的一篇文章,應該算是讀書心得筆記吧.沒想到他竟對Unix系統如此熟悉,實在是相當驚人.
另外,我也覺得年紀真是有差,像我這個年紀的人,如果是上大學才開始接觸電腦,大概十之八九都成了Windows的奴隸了.前兩天他問我能否說出五個OS,我的答案是: 95, 98, 2000, ME, XP (真是近乎腦殘的答案!)
PS. 後來我還跟他說,相較於他那篇文章的第一句"在出國前, 送給陪伴我大學四年的TAnet & UNIX...",我的版本則是"在出國前, 送給陪伴我大學四年的HiNet & Windoes..." (再次腦殘!)
2007年6月3日 星期日
English Quiz 217
(English Quiz 217)
1. Caution also defines Topshop's approach to the U.S. There's no denying the lure of the American market: while fast fashion accounts for around 12% of the British clothing market, that figure drops to just 1% in the U.S., according to Bain, a consulting firm. Spying massive opportunities, Topshop's European rivals have been quick to pile in. Spain's Zara has two dozen stores in the U.S.; Swedish chain H&M boasts more than 100. Not Topshop. Though it is content to market individual collections in America — alongside Barneys' agreement to flog the Moss range, Topshop's Unique line already sells in the Opening Ceremony boutique in New York City — it has not yet followed with any stand-alone stores. The track record of British clothing retailers in the U.S. is not particularly auspicious. A number of retailers, including the ubiquitous U.K. chain Next, have retreated after failing to find their feet in the competitive U.S. market.
Q: 試翻 "The track record ... in the competitive U.S. market."
2. While it looks into diversifying its supply chain, Topshop's go-slow approach to the American market is especially prudent. And glitzy department stores are an ideal venue to test market the Topshop brand. Moss's 50-piece collection might seem cheap compared to most else Barneys has to offer — prices range from around $24 for a strappy tank top to $300 for a leather jacket — but these days, says Robert Burke, a retail consultant in New York, fashion retail's territorial lines are blurring. "Traditional categories no longer exist, he says, "There's almost a reverse snobbery today: people really like the idea of mixing a variety of price points." In other words, few fashionistas think twice about pairing a $1,000 jacket with a $20 T shirt anymore. Launching Moss's opening collection in Barneys, Burke says, makes "perfect sense." Even so, opening stand-alone stores in the U.S. is clearly one of Green's ultimate goals. "I'm not going to get enough scale out of Barneys," he says, adding that he set up a series of real estate meetings in the U.S. to coincide with the Barneys launch. But with competitors like H&M and Zara already flourishing in the U.S., is there room for Topshop? "H&M and Zara are hitting the ball out of the park," reckons Howard Davidowitz, chairman of Davidowitz & Associates, a New York-based retail consultancy. But thanks to its broader customer appeal, Davidowitz says, the potential for Topshop "is better than either of these."
Q: 試翻 "While it looks into ... is especially prudent."
3. Not that there isn't plenty of opportunity to occupy Topshop at home. The company is looking at ways of expanding its brand into new areas in the U.K., too, from confectionery to luggage to footwear. With Topshop stores already selling 35,000 pairs of shoes each week, says Green, "We've got a very good shoe business. Is there a Topshop shoe business in its own right?" With a brand this strong, it's difficult to see why not. Earlier this month, 21-year-old student Caroline Dickinson joined thousands of shoppers for the launch of Moss's collection in London. She waited in line for four hours to buy a $100 white cotton dress to wear at her university ball. By the time she got inside the store, however, she was told that item wasn't available. Unperturbed, Dickinson emerged a quarter of an hour later and a few hundred dollars lighter with two other dresses and a couple of vests. And she vowed to track down the white frock another day. That is the kind of loyalty any retailer would envy.
Q: 試翻 "Not that ... from confectionery to luggage to footwear."
1. Caution also defines Topshop's approach to the U.S. There's no denying the lure of the American market: while fast fashion accounts for around 12% of the British clothing market, that figure drops to just 1% in the U.S., according to Bain, a consulting firm. Spying massive opportunities, Topshop's European rivals have been quick to pile in. Spain's Zara has two dozen stores in the U.S.; Swedish chain H&M boasts more than 100. Not Topshop. Though it is content to market individual collections in America — alongside Barneys' agreement to flog the Moss range, Topshop's Unique line already sells in the Opening Ceremony boutique in New York City — it has not yet followed with any stand-alone stores. The track record of British clothing retailers in the U.S. is not particularly auspicious. A number of retailers, including the ubiquitous U.K. chain Next, have retreated after failing to find their feet in the competitive U.S. market.
Q: 試翻 "The track record ... in the competitive U.S. market."
2. While it looks into diversifying its supply chain, Topshop's go-slow approach to the American market is especially prudent. And glitzy department stores are an ideal venue to test market the Topshop brand. Moss's 50-piece collection might seem cheap compared to most else Barneys has to offer — prices range from around $24 for a strappy tank top to $300 for a leather jacket — but these days, says Robert Burke, a retail consultant in New York, fashion retail's territorial lines are blurring. "Traditional categories no longer exist, he says, "There's almost a reverse snobbery today: people really like the idea of mixing a variety of price points." In other words, few fashionistas think twice about pairing a $1,000 jacket with a $20 T shirt anymore. Launching Moss's opening collection in Barneys, Burke says, makes "perfect sense." Even so, opening stand-alone stores in the U.S. is clearly one of Green's ultimate goals. "I'm not going to get enough scale out of Barneys," he says, adding that he set up a series of real estate meetings in the U.S. to coincide with the Barneys launch. But with competitors like H&M and Zara already flourishing in the U.S., is there room for Topshop? "H&M and Zara are hitting the ball out of the park," reckons Howard Davidowitz, chairman of Davidowitz & Associates, a New York-based retail consultancy. But thanks to its broader customer appeal, Davidowitz says, the potential for Topshop "is better than either of these."
Q: 試翻 "While it looks into ... is especially prudent."
3. Not that there isn't plenty of opportunity to occupy Topshop at home. The company is looking at ways of expanding its brand into new areas in the U.K., too, from confectionery to luggage to footwear. With Topshop stores already selling 35,000 pairs of shoes each week, says Green, "We've got a very good shoe business. Is there a Topshop shoe business in its own right?" With a brand this strong, it's difficult to see why not. Earlier this month, 21-year-old student Caroline Dickinson joined thousands of shoppers for the launch of Moss's collection in London. She waited in line for four hours to buy a $100 white cotton dress to wear at her university ball. By the time she got inside the store, however, she was told that item wasn't available. Unperturbed, Dickinson emerged a quarter of an hour later and a few hundred dollars lighter with two other dresses and a couple of vests. And she vowed to track down the white frock another day. That is the kind of loyalty any retailer would envy.
Q: 試翻 "Not that ... from confectionery to luggage to footwear."
English Quiz 217
(English Quiz 217)
1. Caution also defines Topshop's approach to the U.S. There's no denying the lure of the American market: while fast fashion accounts for around 12% of the British clothing market, that figure drops to just 1% in the U.S., according to Bain, a consulting firm. Spying massive opportunities, Topshop's European rivals have been quick to pile in. Spain's Zara has two dozen stores in the U.S.; Swedish chain H&M boasts more than 100. Not Topshop. Though it is content to market individual collections in America — alongside Barneys' agreement to flog the Moss range, Topshop's Unique line already sells in the Opening Ceremony boutique in New York City — it has not yet followed with any stand-alone stores. The track record of British clothing retailers in the U.S. is not particularly auspicious. A number of retailers, including the ubiquitous U.K. chain Next, have retreated after failing to find their feet in the competitive U.S. market.
Q: 試翻 "The track record ... in the competitive U.S. market."
2. While it looks into diversifying its supply chain, Topshop's go-slow approach to the American market is especially prudent. And glitzy department stores are an ideal venue to test market the Topshop brand. Moss's 50-piece collection might seem cheap compared to most else Barneys has to offer — prices range from around $24 for a strappy tank top to $300 for a leather jacket — but these days, says Robert Burke, a retail consultant in New York, fashion retail's territorial lines are blurring. "Traditional categories no longer exist, he says, "There's almost a reverse snobbery today: people really like the idea of mixing a variety of price points." In other words, few fashionistas think twice about pairing a $1,000 jacket with a $20 T shirt anymore. Launching Moss's opening collection in Barneys, Burke says, makes "perfect sense." Even so, opening stand-alone stores in the U.S. is clearly one of Green's ultimate goals. "I'm not going to get enough scale out of Barneys," he says, adding that he set up a series of real estate meetings in the U.S. to coincide with the Barneys launch. But with competitors like H&M and Zara already flourishing in the U.S., is there room for Topshop? "H&M and Zara are hitting the ball out of the park," reckons Howard Davidowitz, chairman of Davidowitz & Associates, a New York-based retail consultancy. But thanks to its broader customer appeal, Davidowitz says, the potential for Topshop "is better than either of these."
Q: 試翻 "While it looks into ... is especially prudent."
3. Not that there isn't plenty of opportunity to occupy Topshop at home. The company is looking at ways of expanding its brand into new areas in the U.K., too, from confectionery to luggage to footwear. With Topshop stores already selling 35,000 pairs of shoes each week, says Green, "We've got a very good shoe business. Is there a Topshop shoe business in its own right?" With a brand this strong, it's difficult to see why not. Earlier this month, 21-year-old student Caroline Dickinson joined thousands of shoppers for the launch of Moss's collection in London. She waited in line for four hours to buy a $100 white cotton dress to wear at her university ball. By the time she got inside the store, however, she was told that item wasn't available. Unperturbed, Dickinson emerged a quarter of an hour later and a few hundred dollars lighter with two other dresses and a couple of vests. And she vowed to track down the white frock another day. That is the kind of loyalty any retailer would envy.
Q: 試翻 "Not that ... from confectionery to luggage to footwear."
1. Caution also defines Topshop's approach to the U.S. There's no denying the lure of the American market: while fast fashion accounts for around 12% of the British clothing market, that figure drops to just 1% in the U.S., according to Bain, a consulting firm. Spying massive opportunities, Topshop's European rivals have been quick to pile in. Spain's Zara has two dozen stores in the U.S.; Swedish chain H&M boasts more than 100. Not Topshop. Though it is content to market individual collections in America — alongside Barneys' agreement to flog the Moss range, Topshop's Unique line already sells in the Opening Ceremony boutique in New York City — it has not yet followed with any stand-alone stores. The track record of British clothing retailers in the U.S. is not particularly auspicious. A number of retailers, including the ubiquitous U.K. chain Next, have retreated after failing to find their feet in the competitive U.S. market.
Q: 試翻 "The track record ... in the competitive U.S. market."
2. While it looks into diversifying its supply chain, Topshop's go-slow approach to the American market is especially prudent. And glitzy department stores are an ideal venue to test market the Topshop brand. Moss's 50-piece collection might seem cheap compared to most else Barneys has to offer — prices range from around $24 for a strappy tank top to $300 for a leather jacket — but these days, says Robert Burke, a retail consultant in New York, fashion retail's territorial lines are blurring. "Traditional categories no longer exist, he says, "There's almost a reverse snobbery today: people really like the idea of mixing a variety of price points." In other words, few fashionistas think twice about pairing a $1,000 jacket with a $20 T shirt anymore. Launching Moss's opening collection in Barneys, Burke says, makes "perfect sense." Even so, opening stand-alone stores in the U.S. is clearly one of Green's ultimate goals. "I'm not going to get enough scale out of Barneys," he says, adding that he set up a series of real estate meetings in the U.S. to coincide with the Barneys launch. But with competitors like H&M and Zara already flourishing in the U.S., is there room for Topshop? "H&M and Zara are hitting the ball out of the park," reckons Howard Davidowitz, chairman of Davidowitz & Associates, a New York-based retail consultancy. But thanks to its broader customer appeal, Davidowitz says, the potential for Topshop "is better than either of these."
Q: 試翻 "While it looks into ... is especially prudent."
3. Not that there isn't plenty of opportunity to occupy Topshop at home. The company is looking at ways of expanding its brand into new areas in the U.K., too, from confectionery to luggage to footwear. With Topshop stores already selling 35,000 pairs of shoes each week, says Green, "We've got a very good shoe business. Is there a Topshop shoe business in its own right?" With a brand this strong, it's difficult to see why not. Earlier this month, 21-year-old student Caroline Dickinson joined thousands of shoppers for the launch of Moss's collection in London. She waited in line for four hours to buy a $100 white cotton dress to wear at her university ball. By the time she got inside the store, however, she was told that item wasn't available. Unperturbed, Dickinson emerged a quarter of an hour later and a few hundred dollars lighter with two other dresses and a couple of vests. And she vowed to track down the white frock another day. That is the kind of loyalty any retailer would envy.
Q: 試翻 "Not that ... from confectionery to luggage to footwear."
English Quiz 216
(English Quiz 216)
1. Moss's new line is only the latest in Topshop's recent successes among "fast-fashion" retailers, which specialize in almost constantly updating collections of cool clothing at prices so low the clothes are almost disposable. Over the past nine years, Topshop has carved an enviable niche atop this hypercompetitive sector in Britain by appealing to a broader demographic than its competitors, by getting its new designs quickly to market and — in a category where inexpensive too often equals cheap — by emphasizing quality. Topshop's combination of fashion and value has "changed the way we dress," says Lauretta Roberts, editor of Drapers, the British fashion-business bible. That mix has also made it a hit not just with the masses but with celebrities and fashion bigwigs as well. No American fashion editor's trip to the U.K. is complete, for example, without a pilgrimage to Topshop.
Q: 試翻 "Over the past nine years, ... by emphasizing quality."
2. The Topshop formula is proving not just popular, but profitable, too. The chain made around $200 million in pretax earnings last year on revenues of approximately $1.14 billion. That's about half the total profits and a third of sales at the privately owned Arcadia Group. It wasn't always this way. As recently as the late 1990s, says Nick Bubb, a retail analyst at Pali International in London, profits were as little as one-tenth last year's haul. How did Topshop turn it around? By heading (relatively) upscale. Tired of its reputation for tackiness and losing out to budget chains in the '90s, Topshop's managers decided to stop competing just on price. "The decision was made to create a fashion authority," says Mary Homer, a joint managing director of Topshop who's been at the retailer for 20 years. (Green, a retail entrepreneur with years of experience in various types of businesses, acquired Arcadia in 2002, and helped execute the strategy already under way.) The company now employs 22 of its own designers, up from around a dozen in 2002, and they aim to create new looks just as deftly as they copy those from the catwalks.
Q: 試翻 "Tired of its reputaiton ... just on price."
3. Getting new fashions into stores even faster than before also became a central part of Topshop's revival. While traditional clothing retailers might take six weeks to get a design to sales floors, Topshop's trucks are delivering new duds to its outlets usually just two weeks after suppliers have received the order. The result: Topshop debuts hundreds of new pieces in its London flagship outlet every week. And if the emphasis on speed and stylishness means Topshop's togs are a bit more expensive, then so be it. That's a premium the chain's customers have come to expect and are willing to pay for. "If we can get it in four weeks in the U.K., we'll buy it at four weeks in the U.K. rather than buying it cheaper" elsewhere over a longer time frame, says Karyn Fenn, Topshop's other joint managing director. With 300 stores in the U.K and 100 international outlets (all of them franchises) in Asia, Europe and Latin America, Topshop is looking to expand its reach further overseas. "There's no lack of demand," Green says. Even after opening its biggest international store in Stockholm, he says, Scandinavia still holds tremendous potential. But to grow much larger, Topshop will have to make some radical changes. Today, no matter where its smock dresses or miniskirts are stitched together — or where they're destined — everything passes through the U.K. "The existing franchising model and supply chain would not work for significant global expansion and will need to be adapted," Green says. To construct an efficient, decentralized distribution system is a logistics puzzle management is now attempting to solve.
Q: 試翻 "And if the emphasis ... are willing to pay for."
1. Moss's new line is only the latest in Topshop's recent successes among "fast-fashion" retailers, which specialize in almost constantly updating collections of cool clothing at prices so low the clothes are almost disposable. Over the past nine years, Topshop has carved an enviable niche atop this hypercompetitive sector in Britain by appealing to a broader demographic than its competitors, by getting its new designs quickly to market and — in a category where inexpensive too often equals cheap — by emphasizing quality. Topshop's combination of fashion and value has "changed the way we dress," says Lauretta Roberts, editor of Drapers, the British fashion-business bible. That mix has also made it a hit not just with the masses but with celebrities and fashion bigwigs as well. No American fashion editor's trip to the U.K. is complete, for example, without a pilgrimage to Topshop.
Q: 試翻 "Over the past nine years, ... by emphasizing quality."
2. The Topshop formula is proving not just popular, but profitable, too. The chain made around $200 million in pretax earnings last year on revenues of approximately $1.14 billion. That's about half the total profits and a third of sales at the privately owned Arcadia Group. It wasn't always this way. As recently as the late 1990s, says Nick Bubb, a retail analyst at Pali International in London, profits were as little as one-tenth last year's haul. How did Topshop turn it around? By heading (relatively) upscale. Tired of its reputation for tackiness and losing out to budget chains in the '90s, Topshop's managers decided to stop competing just on price. "The decision was made to create a fashion authority," says Mary Homer, a joint managing director of Topshop who's been at the retailer for 20 years. (Green, a retail entrepreneur with years of experience in various types of businesses, acquired Arcadia in 2002, and helped execute the strategy already under way.) The company now employs 22 of its own designers, up from around a dozen in 2002, and they aim to create new looks just as deftly as they copy those from the catwalks.
Q: 試翻 "Tired of its reputaiton ... just on price."
3. Getting new fashions into stores even faster than before also became a central part of Topshop's revival. While traditional clothing retailers might take six weeks to get a design to sales floors, Topshop's trucks are delivering new duds to its outlets usually just two weeks after suppliers have received the order. The result: Topshop debuts hundreds of new pieces in its London flagship outlet every week. And if the emphasis on speed and stylishness means Topshop's togs are a bit more expensive, then so be it. That's a premium the chain's customers have come to expect and are willing to pay for. "If we can get it in four weeks in the U.K., we'll buy it at four weeks in the U.K. rather than buying it cheaper" elsewhere over a longer time frame, says Karyn Fenn, Topshop's other joint managing director. With 300 stores in the U.K and 100 international outlets (all of them franchises) in Asia, Europe and Latin America, Topshop is looking to expand its reach further overseas. "There's no lack of demand," Green says. Even after opening its biggest international store in Stockholm, he says, Scandinavia still holds tremendous potential. But to grow much larger, Topshop will have to make some radical changes. Today, no matter where its smock dresses or miniskirts are stitched together — or where they're destined — everything passes through the U.K. "The existing franchising model and supply chain would not work for significant global expansion and will need to be adapted," Green says. To construct an efficient, decentralized distribution system is a logistics puzzle management is now attempting to solve.
Q: 試翻 "And if the emphasis ... are willing to pay for."
English Quiz 215
(English Quiz 215)
1. It is one thing to conquer a country. It is quite another to stay there and try to force-feed your ideas onto a part of the world that has its own traditions. It is when empires strive to impose their ideals onto the conquered at bayonet point that even the most powerful occupying armies find themselves provoking violent resistance.
Q: 試翻 "It is when ... provoking violent resistance."
2. After the tough time the U.S. has had trying to maintain its garrisons in Afghanistan and Iraq, this lesson may seem very contemporary. But it is one that has been learned before, notably by the British in India exactly 150 years ago. On the evening of Sunday, May 10, 1857, some 300 Indian troops (called sepoys) in the town of Meerut mutinied against their officers. They shot as many as they could, then rode through the night to the old Mughal capital of Delhi. There they massacred every Christian man,woman and child and declared the 82-year-old Mughal Emperor Zafar their leader. The rhetoric of the uprising explicitly revolved around the threat that the British posed to Indian religions. As the sepoys told Zafar on May 11, "We have joined hands to protect our religion and our faith." British men and women who had converted to Islam were not hurt, but Indians who had converted to Christianity were cut down immediately. What lay behind the uprising? The British, through the East India Company, had been trading in India since the early 17th century. But the commercial relationship changed toward the end of the 18th century as the authority of the Mughal Empire collapsed and a new group of conservatives came into power in London, determined to expand British ascendancy. Lord Wellesley, the British Governor-General from 1798 to 1805, called his new approach the Forward Policy. Wellesley made clear that he was determined to establish British dominance over all European rivals and believed it was better pre-emptively to remove hostile Muslim regimes that presumed to resist the West's growing power.
3. The Forward Policy soon developed an evangelical flavor; the plan was to impose not just British laws and technology on India but also British Christian values. That way India would be not only ruled but redeemed. Local laws that offended Christian sensibilities were abrogated. The burning of widows, for example, was banned. One of the company directors, Charles Grant, spoke for many when he wrote of how he believed that Providence had brought the British to India for a higher purpose: "Is it not necessary to conclude that our Asiatic territories were given to us, not merely that we might draw an annual profit from them, but that we might diffuse among their inhabitants, long sunk in darkness, vice and misery, the light and benign influences of Truth?" The reaction came with the Great Mutiny of 1857. Of the 139,000 sepoys in the Bengal Army--the largest modern army in Asia--all but 7,796 turned against their masters. Before long, the mutiny had snowballed into the largest and bloodiest anticolonial revolt facing any European empire in the entire course of the 19th century. There are many echoes linking the uprising to the Islamic resistance the U.S. faces today. Though the great majority of sepoys were Hindus, in Delhi a flag of jihad was raised in the principal mosque, and some of the insurgents described themselves as mujahedin or jihadis. Eventually, the uprising was crushed, but only after some of the most vicious fighting seen at any point in Indian or British history. Innocent British women and children were killed by the rebels; in response, the British destroyed entire cities. Delhi, a bustling and sophisticated city of half a million souls, was left an empty ruin.
Q: 試翻 "The Forward Policy ... not only ruled but redeemed."
4. The lessons of 1857 can be seen today on the streets of Iraq. No one likes being conquered by people of a different faith, then being force-fed improving ideas. The British in 1857 discovered that nothing so easily radicalizes a people or undermines the moderate aspect of Islam than aggressive Western intrusion in the East. The histories of Islamic fundamentalism and Western imperialism have often been closely intertwined--so much so that thinking of 1857, we might remember the celebrated dictum of Edmund Burke: that those who fail to learn from history are always destined to repeat it.
Q: 試翻 "Tge British in 1857 ... in the East."
1. It is one thing to conquer a country. It is quite another to stay there and try to force-feed your ideas onto a part of the world that has its own traditions. It is when empires strive to impose their ideals onto the conquered at bayonet point that even the most powerful occupying armies find themselves provoking violent resistance.
Q: 試翻 "It is when ... provoking violent resistance."
2. After the tough time the U.S. has had trying to maintain its garrisons in Afghanistan and Iraq, this lesson may seem very contemporary. But it is one that has been learned before, notably by the British in India exactly 150 years ago. On the evening of Sunday, May 10, 1857, some 300 Indian troops (called sepoys) in the town of Meerut mutinied against their officers. They shot as many as they could, then rode through the night to the old Mughal capital of Delhi. There they massacred every Christian man,woman and child and declared the 82-year-old Mughal Emperor Zafar their leader. The rhetoric of the uprising explicitly revolved around the threat that the British posed to Indian religions. As the sepoys told Zafar on May 11, "We have joined hands to protect our religion and our faith." British men and women who had converted to Islam were not hurt, but Indians who had converted to Christianity were cut down immediately. What lay behind the uprising? The British, through the East India Company, had been trading in India since the early 17th century. But the commercial relationship changed toward the end of the 18th century as the authority of the Mughal Empire collapsed and a new group of conservatives came into power in London, determined to expand British ascendancy. Lord Wellesley, the British Governor-General from 1798 to 1805, called his new approach the Forward Policy. Wellesley made clear that he was determined to establish British dominance over all European rivals and believed it was better pre-emptively to remove hostile Muslim regimes that presumed to resist the West's growing power.
3. The Forward Policy soon developed an evangelical flavor; the plan was to impose not just British laws and technology on India but also British Christian values. That way India would be not only ruled but redeemed. Local laws that offended Christian sensibilities were abrogated. The burning of widows, for example, was banned. One of the company directors, Charles Grant, spoke for many when he wrote of how he believed that Providence had brought the British to India for a higher purpose: "Is it not necessary to conclude that our Asiatic territories were given to us, not merely that we might draw an annual profit from them, but that we might diffuse among their inhabitants, long sunk in darkness, vice and misery, the light and benign influences of Truth?" The reaction came with the Great Mutiny of 1857. Of the 139,000 sepoys in the Bengal Army--the largest modern army in Asia--all but 7,796 turned against their masters. Before long, the mutiny had snowballed into the largest and bloodiest anticolonial revolt facing any European empire in the entire course of the 19th century. There are many echoes linking the uprising to the Islamic resistance the U.S. faces today. Though the great majority of sepoys were Hindus, in Delhi a flag of jihad was raised in the principal mosque, and some of the insurgents described themselves as mujahedin or jihadis. Eventually, the uprising was crushed, but only after some of the most vicious fighting seen at any point in Indian or British history. Innocent British women and children were killed by the rebels; in response, the British destroyed entire cities. Delhi, a bustling and sophisticated city of half a million souls, was left an empty ruin.
Q: 試翻 "The Forward Policy ... not only ruled but redeemed."
4. The lessons of 1857 can be seen today on the streets of Iraq. No one likes being conquered by people of a different faith, then being force-fed improving ideas. The British in 1857 discovered that nothing so easily radicalizes a people or undermines the moderate aspect of Islam than aggressive Western intrusion in the East. The histories of Islamic fundamentalism and Western imperialism have often been closely intertwined--so much so that thinking of 1857, we might remember the celebrated dictum of Edmund Burke: that those who fail to learn from history are always destined to repeat it.
Q: 試翻 "Tge British in 1857 ... in the East."
English Quiz 214
(English Quiz 214)
1. Could the world be home to a new theocracy? Starting last month, in a tropical country of 65 million, thousands of faithful, many dressed in religious garb, have marched the capital's streets demanding that the draft of the new constitution currently being debated enshrine their beliefs as the state faith. In our era of sectarian strife, many of us shudder at the prospect of another nation blending church and state. Look what happened in Iran and Afghanistan, we think, or what might have occurred if former Ku Klux Klansman David Duke had reigned supreme in America. Yet the marches in Thailand barely broke international headlines. Did I mention? The religion that sparked the protests is Buddhism.
Q: 試翻 "Starting last month, ... as the state faith."
2. In the West, Buddhism is often thought of as spirituality lite, the equivalent of golf to rougher contact sports—except with a better sartorial sense. Certainly, the saffron and burgundy robes, the serene statuary, all paint an exotic picture that brings to mind harmless, crystal-wearing Californians rather than religious fanatics. Our image of a clash of civilizations does not include renegade Buddhist monks. Nevertheless, we should be every bit as worried about the protest marches in Bangkok as those in other countries with different faiths, because the Thai call to prayer is being driven by the same worrying trends: nationalism and communalism. Thailand, famous worldwide for its golden Buddhist temples, is also home to millions of Muslims, most of whom live in the country's south. A religious-based insurgency there has claimed more than 2,000 lives since 2004, with some rebels calling for a separate Islamic homeland. Since Thailand's military coup last September, the violence has only gotten worse, even though the junta leader, General Sonthi Boonyaratglin, is himself a Muslim. With many of the killings involving Muslims targeting Buddhists (although plenty of Muslims have been murdered as well), it's not surprising that sentiment in usually tolerant Thailand is turning hostile. "Ten years ago, it would have failed," says Mettanando Bhikkhu, a prominent Buddhist scholar in Bangkok, of the movement to make the religion the country's official faith. "But among these Buddhist nationalists, burning sentiments against other religions are very strong."
Q: 試翻 "Certainly, ... rather than religious fanatics."
3. Taking stock of the new mood, General Sonthi announced after the protests that he didn't mind if Buddhism was added to the constitution, so long as the move promoted peace in Thailand. Other junta members said they would not stand in the way of a state religion. The lack of government opposition is likely a sign of a weakened leadership aiming to please the public, rather than a reflection of personal zealotry. Yet many Buddhists in Thailand have no wish to see their faith enter politics. And Thai Muslims, most of whom already feel marginalized in this overwhelmingly Buddhist nation, will read any such move as more evidence of their second-class status. "It will inflame the south," says Panitan Wattanayagorn, a security specialist at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok. "Muslim countries will believe we are against minorities." That would be a shame, since historically Thai culture has shown tolerance toward other cultures and religions. "Most Thais would like to find a compromise or middle path on this [constitutional] issue," says Panitan. A Buddhist theologian couldn't have said it any better.
Q: 試翻 "The lack of government opposition ... personal zealotry."
Q: 試翻 "And Thai Muslims, ... their second-class status."
1. Could the world be home to a new theocracy? Starting last month, in a tropical country of 65 million, thousands of faithful, many dressed in religious garb, have marched the capital's streets demanding that the draft of the new constitution currently being debated enshrine their beliefs as the state faith. In our era of sectarian strife, many of us shudder at the prospect of another nation blending church and state. Look what happened in Iran and Afghanistan, we think, or what might have occurred if former Ku Klux Klansman David Duke had reigned supreme in America. Yet the marches in Thailand barely broke international headlines. Did I mention? The religion that sparked the protests is Buddhism.
Q: 試翻 "Starting last month, ... as the state faith."
2. In the West, Buddhism is often thought of as spirituality lite, the equivalent of golf to rougher contact sports—except with a better sartorial sense. Certainly, the saffron and burgundy robes, the serene statuary, all paint an exotic picture that brings to mind harmless, crystal-wearing Californians rather than religious fanatics. Our image of a clash of civilizations does not include renegade Buddhist monks. Nevertheless, we should be every bit as worried about the protest marches in Bangkok as those in other countries with different faiths, because the Thai call to prayer is being driven by the same worrying trends: nationalism and communalism. Thailand, famous worldwide for its golden Buddhist temples, is also home to millions of Muslims, most of whom live in the country's south. A religious-based insurgency there has claimed more than 2,000 lives since 2004, with some rebels calling for a separate Islamic homeland. Since Thailand's military coup last September, the violence has only gotten worse, even though the junta leader, General Sonthi Boonyaratglin, is himself a Muslim. With many of the killings involving Muslims targeting Buddhists (although plenty of Muslims have been murdered as well), it's not surprising that sentiment in usually tolerant Thailand is turning hostile. "Ten years ago, it would have failed," says Mettanando Bhikkhu, a prominent Buddhist scholar in Bangkok, of the movement to make the religion the country's official faith. "But among these Buddhist nationalists, burning sentiments against other religions are very strong."
Q: 試翻 "Certainly, ... rather than religious fanatics."
3. Taking stock of the new mood, General Sonthi announced after the protests that he didn't mind if Buddhism was added to the constitution, so long as the move promoted peace in Thailand. Other junta members said they would not stand in the way of a state religion. The lack of government opposition is likely a sign of a weakened leadership aiming to please the public, rather than a reflection of personal zealotry. Yet many Buddhists in Thailand have no wish to see their faith enter politics. And Thai Muslims, most of whom already feel marginalized in this overwhelmingly Buddhist nation, will read any such move as more evidence of their second-class status. "It will inflame the south," says Panitan Wattanayagorn, a security specialist at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok. "Muslim countries will believe we are against minorities." That would be a shame, since historically Thai culture has shown tolerance toward other cultures and religions. "Most Thais would like to find a compromise or middle path on this [constitutional] issue," says Panitan. A Buddhist theologian couldn't have said it any better.
Q: 試翻 "The lack of government opposition ... personal zealotry."
Q: 試翻 "And Thai Muslims, ... their second-class status."
English Quiz 213
(English Quiz 213)
1. In 1902, Boston boardinghouse owner Jessie Barron bought Dow Jones & Co., publisher of the Wall Street Journal, with a down payment of $2,500. She did this at the behest of her longtime boarder and not-so-longtime second husband, financial writer Clarence Barron. But Mrs. Barron really was the owner, and when she died in 1918, her majority share passed to her daughter by her first marriage, Jane Bancroft. The Bancrofts have held a controlling stake in Dow Jones ever since. Jane's husband Hugh Bancroft was company president for a time, but since his death in 1933, the family has mostly kept its hands off. "I want you to do what's best for the company," Jane reportedly told her husband's successor, reporter turned manager Casey Hogate. "Don't you and the boys worry about dividends." The modern, globe-spanning Journal was thus built by "the boys" from the newsroom while the Bancrofts stood benignly by (though they did, as the Journal returned to health after the Depression, eventually start caring about dividends).
Q: 試翻 "The modern, ... start caring about dividens."
2. Now, as you have surely heard, the three dozen cousins who have a hand in voting the shares inherited from Jessie Barron face a momentous decision. Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. has offered to buy them out at a staggeringly high price--$60 a share, or 75% higher than the market was valuing Dow Jones before the offer. The Bancrofts' initial answer was no, but there is disagreement within the family. If Murdoch ups his bid, anything could happen--and the current betting on Wall Street is that something will. With that, yet another leading family would depart an American news business once dominated by such clans. Newspaper-owning families began selling out in a big way to corporate chains in the 1960s. The largest chains--Gannett, Knight-Ridder, Tribune, Times Mirror--mostly started out family run as well, but as they expanded, the family stake was diluted, and Wall Street came to call the shots. This wasn't all bad; lots of family-owned newspapers were horrible. Knight-Ridder in particular gained a reputation for improving the properties it bought. But with profits under severe pressure from the Internet, Wall Street has turned the screws. Knight-Ridder was sold off and busted up last year; Tribune, which bought Times Mirror in 2000, was acquired by vulture investor Sam Zell in April. Left standing are the great exceptions to the eat-or-be-eaten model, the family-owned companies behind the country's three best newspapers: the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal. The Bancrofts were unique in their disengagement from the business they controlled. But their view of the company they inherited as a trust whose value exceeded the dividends it generated was shared by the more hands-on Sulzbergers of New York City and Grahams of Washington. "It's not just family ownership," says Alex Jones, director of Harvard's Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy and co-author of two histories of newspaper families (the Sulzbergers as well as the Binghams of Louisville, Ky.). "It's a particular kind of family ownership that's nearly miraculous."
Q: 試翻 "Left standing are ... the Wall Street Journal."
3. That kind of near miraculous commitment can be awfully hard to maintain. In recent decades, all three families have made use of dual-class stock structures that allow them to take Wall Street's money while attempting to resist its pressures. At the New York Times Co., the Sulzbergers own 19% of the company but control 70% of the voting power. At the Washington Post Co., the Grahams own close to 40% of the company and get about 75% of the votes. At Dow Jones, the Bancrofts own 25% of the company and get 64% of the votes. The Grahams have so far escaped much criticism because their company has performed well (mainly thanks to its Kaplan educational subsidiary), but the New York Times Co.'s outside shareholders have been clamoring for an end to the dual-share setup. Still, they don't have the votes to force a change. The biggest danger to family control inevitably comes from the family members themselves.
Q: 試翻 "The Grahams have so far ... and end to the dual-share setup."
4. That's the case at Dow Jones. A decade ago, two of the younger Bancroft cousins began agitating for more shareholder-friendly management. They've gotten their way, to an extent. For the first time since Hugh Bancroft, the company has a CEO who didn't rise through the reporting and editing ranks. But the stock continued to flounder until Murdoch came along with his hugely attractive offer. It is a lot to ask of a bunch of far-flung cousins to run the business they own as a public trust. Lately there has been much talk of restructuring news organizations as actual trusts--that is, nonprofits. Florida's St. Petersburg Times is the biggest American paper that works this way; overseas the Guardian in England and the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung in Germany are foundation owned. Creating these entities, though, requires a far greater sacrifice than any made so far by the Bancrofts, Grahams and Sulzbergers: they would have to hand over their shares without recompense.
Q: 試翻 "Creating these entities, ... without recompense."
5. Which leaves Murdoch. As he emphasized in a letter to the Bancrofts, his company is a family enterprise too . He inherited Australia's Adelaide News from his father in 1952, and his children will get his stake in News Corp. It's yet another dual-share setup, with the Murdochs holding (after a share swap currently awaiting regulatory approval) 13% of company stock and 39% of the votes. That is no majority--one key difference between the Murdochs and the Bancrofts. A bigger difference is that Murdoch has treated News Corp. not as a trust but as a vehicle to get richer and more powerful. From one newspaper in a provincial Australian city, he has built a global empire that now encompasses 20th Century Fox, MySpace and the Times of London. The man has shown a remarkable ability to sniff opportunity where others don't. But he is 76, he won't be around forever, and it's hard to say what News Corp. will be in the absence of his controversial genius. Quite possibly, it will be yet another family media business that stops being a family business.
1. In 1902, Boston boardinghouse owner Jessie Barron bought Dow Jones & Co., publisher of the Wall Street Journal, with a down payment of $2,500. She did this at the behest of her longtime boarder and not-so-longtime second husband, financial writer Clarence Barron. But Mrs. Barron really was the owner, and when she died in 1918, her majority share passed to her daughter by her first marriage, Jane Bancroft. The Bancrofts have held a controlling stake in Dow Jones ever since. Jane's husband Hugh Bancroft was company president for a time, but since his death in 1933, the family has mostly kept its hands off. "I want you to do what's best for the company," Jane reportedly told her husband's successor, reporter turned manager Casey Hogate. "Don't you and the boys worry about dividends." The modern, globe-spanning Journal was thus built by "the boys" from the newsroom while the Bancrofts stood benignly by (though they did, as the Journal returned to health after the Depression, eventually start caring about dividends).
Q: 試翻 "The modern, ... start caring about dividens."
2. Now, as you have surely heard, the three dozen cousins who have a hand in voting the shares inherited from Jessie Barron face a momentous decision. Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. has offered to buy them out at a staggeringly high price--$60 a share, or 75% higher than the market was valuing Dow Jones before the offer. The Bancrofts' initial answer was no, but there is disagreement within the family. If Murdoch ups his bid, anything could happen--and the current betting on Wall Street is that something will. With that, yet another leading family would depart an American news business once dominated by such clans. Newspaper-owning families began selling out in a big way to corporate chains in the 1960s. The largest chains--Gannett, Knight-Ridder, Tribune, Times Mirror--mostly started out family run as well, but as they expanded, the family stake was diluted, and Wall Street came to call the shots. This wasn't all bad; lots of family-owned newspapers were horrible. Knight-Ridder in particular gained a reputation for improving the properties it bought. But with profits under severe pressure from the Internet, Wall Street has turned the screws. Knight-Ridder was sold off and busted up last year; Tribune, which bought Times Mirror in 2000, was acquired by vulture investor Sam Zell in April. Left standing are the great exceptions to the eat-or-be-eaten model, the family-owned companies behind the country's three best newspapers: the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal. The Bancrofts were unique in their disengagement from the business they controlled. But their view of the company they inherited as a trust whose value exceeded the dividends it generated was shared by the more hands-on Sulzbergers of New York City and Grahams of Washington. "It's not just family ownership," says Alex Jones, director of Harvard's Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy and co-author of two histories of newspaper families (the Sulzbergers as well as the Binghams of Louisville, Ky.). "It's a particular kind of family ownership that's nearly miraculous."
Q: 試翻 "Left standing are ... the Wall Street Journal."
3. That kind of near miraculous commitment can be awfully hard to maintain. In recent decades, all three families have made use of dual-class stock structures that allow them to take Wall Street's money while attempting to resist its pressures. At the New York Times Co., the Sulzbergers own 19% of the company but control 70% of the voting power. At the Washington Post Co., the Grahams own close to 40% of the company and get about 75% of the votes. At Dow Jones, the Bancrofts own 25% of the company and get 64% of the votes. The Grahams have so far escaped much criticism because their company has performed well (mainly thanks to its Kaplan educational subsidiary), but the New York Times Co.'s outside shareholders have been clamoring for an end to the dual-share setup. Still, they don't have the votes to force a change. The biggest danger to family control inevitably comes from the family members themselves.
Q: 試翻 "The Grahams have so far ... and end to the dual-share setup."
4. That's the case at Dow Jones. A decade ago, two of the younger Bancroft cousins began agitating for more shareholder-friendly management. They've gotten their way, to an extent. For the first time since Hugh Bancroft, the company has a CEO who didn't rise through the reporting and editing ranks. But the stock continued to flounder until Murdoch came along with his hugely attractive offer. It is a lot to ask of a bunch of far-flung cousins to run the business they own as a public trust. Lately there has been much talk of restructuring news organizations as actual trusts--that is, nonprofits. Florida's St. Petersburg Times is the biggest American paper that works this way; overseas the Guardian in England and the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung in Germany are foundation owned. Creating these entities, though, requires a far greater sacrifice than any made so far by the Bancrofts, Grahams and Sulzbergers: they would have to hand over their shares without recompense.
Q: 試翻 "Creating these entities, ... without recompense."
5. Which leaves Murdoch. As he emphasized in a letter to the Bancrofts, his company is a family enterprise too . He inherited Australia's Adelaide News from his father in 1952, and his children will get his stake in News Corp. It's yet another dual-share setup, with the Murdochs holding (after a share swap currently awaiting regulatory approval) 13% of company stock and 39% of the votes. That is no majority--one key difference between the Murdochs and the Bancrofts. A bigger difference is that Murdoch has treated News Corp. not as a trust but as a vehicle to get richer and more powerful. From one newspaper in a provincial Australian city, he has built a global empire that now encompasses 20th Century Fox, MySpace and the Times of London. The man has shown a remarkable ability to sniff opportunity where others don't. But he is 76, he won't be around forever, and it's hard to say what News Corp. will be in the absence of his controversial genius. Quite possibly, it will be yet another family media business that stops being a family business.
English Quiz 212
(English Quiz 212)
1. According to Deloitte's 2006 Annual Review of Football Finance, the top five earners in the 2004-05 season — Manchester United, Chelsea, Liverpool, Arsenal and Newcastle United — accounted for almost half of both revenue and salary costs. And though average club revenue hit $124 million in 2004-05, the ratio of revenue at the richest club to that of the poorest is 4.7:1, well over twice the NFL's rate and almost double the NBA's. While income from TV rights in the NFL is split evenly between all 32 teams, half of domestic rights in the Premier League are divided according to the number of times a team is aired and its final league position. The result: the top club pockets almost twice the amount that the bottom team does — and only the top few clubs access money-spinning European club competition the following season. In the U.S. there are mechanisms such as salary caps in place to ensure a competitive balance, but there's no sign of anything like that in the Premiership. "What we have is almost like a two-tier league structure," says Birkbeck's Chadwick: "Those that can win the Premier League, and those that won't." That may not matter as much as you might think. Though only four different teams have won the Premier League since 1992, most fans seem unperturbed by a lack of competitiveness. Midway through a survey of thousands of supporters, Birkbeck's Chadwick says top-flight followers still consider the league "exciting and unpredictable." And financial prospects for smaller teams are brightening. More of them are now profitable, according to the Deloitte report. These days, "to be the 10th or 12th club in the best league is still good," says Chris Lee, head of Professional Sports Business at Barclays, which acts as banker for half of the Premier League's clubs. "Not all clubs are making a profit, but there's not so much of an excuse now."
Q: 試翻 "The result: ... the following season."
2. Profitability would no doubt be helped if clubs could bring wages under control. Over the past decade, according to Deloitte, Premier League wages rose an average of 20% a year. Top earners like Chelsea's Michael Ballack and Thierry Henry of Arsenal reportedly pocket around $12.5 million each year. But in 2004-05, for the first time since 1992, total wages dipped, and the ratio of wages to revenue is lower than it is in most of the other big European leagues. Clubs threatened with relegation out of the Premiership (three teams are dropped each year, and three added) are wising up to performance-related pay schemes. From next season, even the worst team will net around $54 million in media and TV revenue, almost as much as the $60 million that Chelsea took home for winning the league last year. And relegated teams get "parachute payments" that soften the blow of tumbling down a division. With that kind of stability, building a brand in Asia and other foreign markets may not seem such a stretch, even for relatively small clubs. Despite losing money last season, Sheffield United bought China's Chengdu Five Bull football team (and duly renamed the side the Blades, to match the English club's moniker). Since then, United has opened a city-center bar and retail outlet at the stadium. Analysts are impressed. "If a club hasn't got a high profile or heaps of cash, building relationships in the local market is a cost-effective way to build brand awareness and suit longer-term Asian sensibilities," says Geoffrey Gold, ceo of Football Dynamics Asia, the Jakarta-based consultants.
Q: 試翻 "And relegated teams ... down a division."
3. To lend a bigger hand to mid- or low-placed sides like Villa and Sheffield, the Premier League could learn from the NBA. Rather than basketball teams marketing themselves individually, the NBA represents the collective interest of the league when it sells itself in places like China. "The NBA has the vision, focus and drive that the [Premier League] doesn't," says Terry Rhoads, general manager of Shanghai's Zou Marketing, who has advised both the NFL and the NBA on selling to China. "The [Premier League] clubs are taking the lead and there's no coordinated effort. Right now it's like the children leading the parents when it should be the other way around." Scudamore dismisses the comparison. The NBA, he says, "doesn't have global brands as clubs." Because it boasts legendary teams like Manchester United, he thinks, the Premier League has "a very different model." Closer to home, fans at Old Trafford stadium are grappling with marketing of a different kind. Even when there's no game on, there are plenty of ways to part a fan from his cash. You can join a tour party — as 200,000 fans do each year, paying $20 for the privilege. You can hit the Manchester United megastore, and look at anything from jewelry to lacy garters. It's not what the cloth-cap and meat-pie fans of yore would have bought. But then, the English Premier League left behind the world of those supporters long ago.
Q: 試翻 "Even when ... from his cash."
1. According to Deloitte's 2006 Annual Review of Football Finance, the top five earners in the 2004-05 season — Manchester United, Chelsea, Liverpool, Arsenal and Newcastle United — accounted for almost half of both revenue and salary costs. And though average club revenue hit $124 million in 2004-05, the ratio of revenue at the richest club to that of the poorest is 4.7:1, well over twice the NFL's rate and almost double the NBA's. While income from TV rights in the NFL is split evenly between all 32 teams, half of domestic rights in the Premier League are divided according to the number of times a team is aired and its final league position. The result: the top club pockets almost twice the amount that the bottom team does — and only the top few clubs access money-spinning European club competition the following season. In the U.S. there are mechanisms such as salary caps in place to ensure a competitive balance, but there's no sign of anything like that in the Premiership. "What we have is almost like a two-tier league structure," says Birkbeck's Chadwick: "Those that can win the Premier League, and those that won't." That may not matter as much as you might think. Though only four different teams have won the Premier League since 1992, most fans seem unperturbed by a lack of competitiveness. Midway through a survey of thousands of supporters, Birkbeck's Chadwick says top-flight followers still consider the league "exciting and unpredictable." And financial prospects for smaller teams are brightening. More of them are now profitable, according to the Deloitte report. These days, "to be the 10th or 12th club in the best league is still good," says Chris Lee, head of Professional Sports Business at Barclays, which acts as banker for half of the Premier League's clubs. "Not all clubs are making a profit, but there's not so much of an excuse now."
Q: 試翻 "The result: ... the following season."
2. Profitability would no doubt be helped if clubs could bring wages under control. Over the past decade, according to Deloitte, Premier League wages rose an average of 20% a year. Top earners like Chelsea's Michael Ballack and Thierry Henry of Arsenal reportedly pocket around $12.5 million each year. But in 2004-05, for the first time since 1992, total wages dipped, and the ratio of wages to revenue is lower than it is in most of the other big European leagues. Clubs threatened with relegation out of the Premiership (three teams are dropped each year, and three added) are wising up to performance-related pay schemes. From next season, even the worst team will net around $54 million in media and TV revenue, almost as much as the $60 million that Chelsea took home for winning the league last year. And relegated teams get "parachute payments" that soften the blow of tumbling down a division. With that kind of stability, building a brand in Asia and other foreign markets may not seem such a stretch, even for relatively small clubs. Despite losing money last season, Sheffield United bought China's Chengdu Five Bull football team (and duly renamed the side the Blades, to match the English club's moniker). Since then, United has opened a city-center bar and retail outlet at the stadium. Analysts are impressed. "If a club hasn't got a high profile or heaps of cash, building relationships in the local market is a cost-effective way to build brand awareness and suit longer-term Asian sensibilities," says Geoffrey Gold, ceo of Football Dynamics Asia, the Jakarta-based consultants.
Q: 試翻 "And relegated teams ... down a division."
3. To lend a bigger hand to mid- or low-placed sides like Villa and Sheffield, the Premier League could learn from the NBA. Rather than basketball teams marketing themselves individually, the NBA represents the collective interest of the league when it sells itself in places like China. "The NBA has the vision, focus and drive that the [Premier League] doesn't," says Terry Rhoads, general manager of Shanghai's Zou Marketing, who has advised both the NFL and the NBA on selling to China. "The [Premier League] clubs are taking the lead and there's no coordinated effort. Right now it's like the children leading the parents when it should be the other way around." Scudamore dismisses the comparison. The NBA, he says, "doesn't have global brands as clubs." Because it boasts legendary teams like Manchester United, he thinks, the Premier League has "a very different model." Closer to home, fans at Old Trafford stadium are grappling with marketing of a different kind. Even when there's no game on, there are plenty of ways to part a fan from his cash. You can join a tour party — as 200,000 fans do each year, paying $20 for the privilege. You can hit the Manchester United megastore, and look at anything from jewelry to lacy garters. It's not what the cloth-cap and meat-pie fans of yore would have bought. But then, the English Premier League left behind the world of those supporters long ago.
Q: 試翻 "Even when ... from his cash."
English Quiz 211
(English Quiz 211)
1. For all its success at home, it is the Premiership's global reach that sets it apart from other sports leagues. That reflects good business sense. "We're a small island with a relatively small population," says Richard Scudamore, ceo of the Premier League. In Britain, "there's going to be limited domestic growth" for teams. But while the indicators at home are "fairly maxed out" — match-day attendance, for instance, averages 92% across the League — Scudamore says that recruiting the legions of potential foreign fans offers "huge global scope." The nature of the game helps. Purists have often mocked the English style of football, but with its fast pace and all-action style, it is undeniably exciting — especially in markets where football is relatively novel. Ask Dittha Jumpakaeg, p.r. manager for the Liverpool Thailand Fan Club. The Bangkok local doesn't remember exactly how old he was when he first watched Liverpool on TV, but he was hooked by the side's dazzling control. "It seemed the other side never touched the ball,'' he says. (They didn't.) Germany's Bundesliga occasionally aired in Thailand, Dittha says, but the German matches seemed slower, the players older. "Thais," he adds, "like a fast-paced game." (In 2004, then Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra actually tried to buy into Liverpool.) Now some 41 million of Manchester United's estimated 75 million fans worldwide are in Asia, according to MORI, and in a report for England's Football Association this year, academics at Warwick Business School found that 14% of Chinese football fans polled said they owned a Manchester United shirt.
Q: 試翻 "For all its success ... from other sports leagues."
2. Adding an Asian player to the ranks can help. Four Premiership teams now have Chinese players on their books, and since welcoming South Korea's Park Ji Sung into their line-up in 2005, Manchester United have become big in Seoul. Three-quarters of South Korea's football fans see the club as their favorite European side, according to Birkbeck, and more than 650,000 South Koreans have signed up for a club-branded credit or debit card since their launch a year ago. By launching local-language websites, teams can tailor marketing to fit an individual country, drumming up local advertising and sponsorship revenue. As part of its lofty pledge to become the world's biggest club by 2014, Chelsea, owned by Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich, launched a Mandarin website in January in conjunction with Sina, China's leading portal; in late March, the club unveiled another aimed at South Korea. The London team is also playing benefactor. Apart from hosting the Chinese Olympic football team in London in February, the club sponsors the Asian Football Confederation's Vision Asia project to develop grassroots leagues across China. Next summer, Chelsea will embark on its first-ever tour of China.
3. The Premiership's triple play — losing the hooligans, luring big money at home, expanding overseas — has made it the envy of other sports leagues. In the 2005-06 season, estimated revenue hit $2.5 billion, much more than that of any other league in Europe. The Premiership still lags behind major U.S. leagues like the National Basketball Association (NBA) or the National Football League (NFL) — the latter earned more than $6 billion in 2005-06. But with only 20 clubs competing in the English league, average club takings are already more than in the NBA. There's more to come. For each of the three seasons of a new broadcast deal that begins later this year, domestic TV rights for the Premier League fetched $1.1 billion, compared with just $680 million for the deal that expires this summer. Taking Britain's smaller population into account, the League, under the new deal, will generate 50% more domestic broadcasting revenue per head than the NFL, and eight times that of the NBA, according to consultants Deloitte. Increasingly, that TV revenue is going to come from outside the U.K. The Premiership had a weekly global TV audience of 78 million last season, with broadcasters such as the Fox Soccer Channel in the U.S. and pccw in Hong Kong clamoring for a piece of the action. TV deals that put even the smaller Premier League sides on screens from Shanghai to Chicago are "a fantastic impetus to all clubs," reckons Dan Jones, a partner at Deloitte's Sports Business Group. Foreign channels covering more than 200 countries together stumped up $1.23 billion to air the league for the three seasons beginning 2007-08, paying just shy of double the current amount and contributing a quarter of the Premier League's central income. Scudamore told Time that he thinks overseas rights will soon be worth half of that collective pot. Such figures make American sports tycoons green; overall, foreign markets account for less than 5% of the NFL's revenue, and even for the NBA, a true global brand, overseas media rights amount to just $130 million a year.
Q: 試翻 "The Premiership's triple play ... other sports leagues."
Q: 試翻 "Foreign channels ... the Premier League's central income."
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