作者：shiyi18

Aerial bombardment

空袭

The calibration of destruction

校准破坏范围

Smaller, cleverer and more accurate munitions are changing warfare

军备的小型化、智能化、精准化引发战争变革

Jan 28th 2010 | From The Economist print edition

THE Perseus, a 900kg (2,000lb) bomb made in Greece, incinerates almost everything in an area larger than a dozen football fields. Farther out, oxygen is sucked from the air and people may be crushed by a pressure wave. The inferno is similar to that caused by napalm—a jellied-petrol explosive heavily restricted by a United Nations weapons convention.

珀尔修斯是一种希腊制造的900公斤（2000磅）重的炸弹，爆炸后几乎能将比12个足球场还大的区域内的一切物体化为灰烬。更大范围内空气中的氧气被“抽走”，人也可能受到压力波冲击。这与凝固汽油弹爆炸产生的结果相似。凝固汽油弹是联合国武器公约严格限制使用的胶状汽油爆炸物。

Modified with new technologies, however, the Perseus is increasingly considered legitimate. Mark Hiznay, a bombs-control expert at Human Rights Watch, a humanitarian group based in New York, has gone so far as to say it has become a necessary weapon. With a stronger steel casing and backup shock-resistant triggering mechanisms, the Perseus can smash through several metres of reinforced concrete and detonate only after it has gone into a bunker. This makes the bomb a good way to destroy and sterilise germ- and chemical-warfare laboratories while limiting damage nearby, says Mr Hiznay.

然而，经过新技术改造的珀尔修斯炸弹逐渐被认为是合法的。位于纽约的人道主义组织“人权观察组织”炸弹控制专家马克•希茨内甚至表示，珀尔修斯已经成了一种必要的武器。珀尔修斯拥有更坚固的钢铁外壳和抗震性延时触发系统，能击穿数米厚的钢筋混凝土，并在进入掩体之后才引爆。希茨内说，凭借这种性能，使用珀尔修斯成了在限制对周围的破坏的前提下，毁灭生化武器实验室并进行一次彻底消毒的好手段。

A new generation of advanced ordnance, including the Perseus, is making bombing campaigns safer for civilians. During the first Gulf war, in 1991, American warplanes had to drop an average of six 450kg satellite-guided bombs to destroy a tank or a small building. During the second war, 12 years later, a similar attack required bombs half that size, and fewer of them. Today 100kg bombs would suffice, because guidance systems are so good that individual rooms, as opposed to entire buildings, can be aimed at.

包括珀尔修斯在内的新一代先进炸弹使得轰炸行动对平民更为安全。1991年第一次海湾战争期间，要摧毁一辆坦克或一座小型建筑，美国战斗机平均得投下六枚450公斤重的卫星制导炸弹。12年后，第二次海湾战争期间，类似的空袭所需炸弹体积减半，枚数更少。如今只要使用100公斤重的炸弹就足够了，因为现在的制导系统可以精确地瞄准瞄准单个房间而无须像以往那样将整座建筑作为轰炸目标。

Greek fire

希腊火

Much of this revolution, as Mr Hiznay terms it, is due to guidance kits that can be attached to existing “dumb” bombs. An upgraded bomb, when falling, uses data from the global-positioning system in combination with laser and infra-red sensors to adjust a set of fins that work like aeroplane flaps. This steers the bomb towards its target—even if that target is moving. The AASM, a French navy and air-force guidance system, has fins that can guide and glide bombs for 50km (31 miles) and hit a target within a metre of the bullseye. The LJDAM, a system made by Boeing and first exported in 2008, can land a bomb on a vehicle that is travelling at 110kph.

这次革命（希茨内的叫法）主要归功于可以安装在已有的“傻瓜”炸弹上的制导装置。一枚升级后的炸弹，落下过程中，利用全球定位系统以及激光和红外感应器提供的数据调整弹身上的一组鳍片，其工作原理类似飞机襟翼。即使目标在移动，它也能相应进行调整，使炸弹准确命中目标。法国海空军联合研制的制导炸弹“模块化空对地武器（AASM）”拥有的鳍片能引导炸弹滑行50公里（31英里）后准确地击中目标，误差不到1米。由波音公司制造、2008年首次输出的杰达姆(LJDAM)系统能能使炸弹准确命中一辆时速达110公里的车辆。

The market for add-on guidance systems is booming. More than a dozen countries, including South Africa, make them. Two dozen—including India, Pakistan and Turkey—buy them. They are not cheap: $23,000 per bomb will get you one at the bottom of the range. It is not just a more effective weapon, but also a safer one for the bomber. He can fly higher, meaning that he is at less risk from ground fire.

附加制导系统的市场正在迅速扩大。有十多个国家（包括南非）生产这种系统。有24个国家——包括印度、巴基斯坦和土耳其——购买这种系统。附加制导炸弹不便宜，最便宜的也要23000美刀一枚。这种武器不仅效率更高，对投弹者也更安全。投弹者可以飞得更高一些，从而使自己受到的地面火力威胁更少。

Moreover, these bombs continue to be clever even after arriving at the target. Their fuses can set off explosions at precisely the right moment. One defence contractor, Israel Military Industries, makes a 225kg bomb, the MPR-500, that can hammer through several storeys of a building and explode on a chosen floor. This feat means triggering the detonation about two milliseconds after the bomb hits the ceiling above the doomed storey. The bomb can be programmed to do this just seconds before it is dropped. Such precision means it is sold as a replacement for ordnance two or more times its size.

而且这些炸弹抵达目标后仍未丧失智能，上面的引信能在恰到好处的时刻引爆。 国防承包商以色列军事工业公司生产的一种225公斤炸弹MPR-500能击穿数层建筑，并在选定的楼层爆炸。如此绝技，意味着要在炸弹击中目标楼层天花板后约2毫秒引爆。炸弹可以在投下前数秒通过编程完成设定。如此高的精确度，意味着它能代替体积是其两倍以上的炸弹。

Bomb-makers are also finding cleverer ways of destroying deeply buried bunkers. Almost five years ago, America’s Congress cut research funding for a controversial bunker-busting nuke called the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator. Today the bulk of effort to develop bunker-smashers in Western countries employs conventional weaponry. In a classic attack, a succession of big bombs is dropped on the same spot. Such “drilling”, however, may require numerous warplanes and inflict great damage on the surrounding area.

而且，炸弹生产商正在寻找更智能的方法，以摧毁深埋地下的掩体。几乎就在五年前，美国国会削减了一种引起争议的掩体核弹——坚实型核钻地弹——的研究经费。如今，西方国家大多数寻找粉碎掩体的方法的努力都使用常规武器。传统的打击方法将一连串大型炸弹投掷到同一地点。然而，这种“钻孔”的方式需要投入大量战斗机，而且会对周围地区造成很大破坏。

Souping up bombs with rockets that speed up their impact might provide an alternative. Bunker-busters work best if they detonate after burrowing into the ground. This helps “couple” the explosion to the ground so that shock waves designed to collapse a bunker travel deeper. Israel Military Industries is studying a rocket that would ignite just before the bomb hit, digging it deeper than ever before exploding.

利用火箭推进炸弹以加大其冲击力，或许是一种选择。 掩体炸弹若能在钻入地下以后再引爆，效果最好。这样能将爆炸“系”在地底，令用来摧毁掩体的冲击波传播得更深。以色列军事工业公司正在研制能刚好在炸弹触地前点火的火箭，使炸弹能钻得更深些再爆炸。

That, according to Meir Geva, head of aerial munitions at Israel Military Industries, can be very deep indeed. His firm makes a bunker-buster which weighs about as much as a small car. “To my great sorrow”, Mr Geva says, its shockwave ranges cannot be revealed.

以色列军事工业公司航空弹药负责人梅厄•戈瓦认为，这样炸弹确实可以钻得非常深。他们公司制造了一种重量约与一部小轿车相当的掩体炸弹。“非常遗憾，”格瓦说，不能透露它的冲击波范围。

Whatever the bunker-buster’s destructive power, the next generation of bombs will dwarf it. The Massive Ordnance Penetrator, an American bunker-buster scheduled for deployment at the end of the year, weighs 15 times as much.

无论这种掩体炸弹的破坏力有多大，下一代炸弹都会令其相形见绌。巨型钻地弹是美国计划年底部署的掩体炸弹，重量是它的15倍。

On April 2nd 2003, during the second Gulf war, a hundred or so Iraqi armoured vehicles approached a far smaller American reconnaissance unit south of Baghdad. Responding to a call for help, a B-52 bomber attacked the first 30 or so vehicles in the column with a single, historic pass. It dropped two new CBU-105 bombs, and the result shocked the soldiers of both sides—and, soon enough, military observers everywhere.

2003年4月2日第二次海湾战争期间，约100辆伊拉克装甲车逼近巴格达南部一个小得多的美军侦察部队。收到求救信号，一架B-52轰炸机用具有历史意义的单次投弹，炸毁了队伍前面的约30辆装甲车。当时共投下了两枚CBU-105新型炸弹，令双方士兵大为震惊，很快，全世界的军事观察员也为之震惊。

While falling, the CBU-105 bombs popped open, each releasing ten submunitions which were slowed by parachutes. Each of these used mini rockets to spin and eject outward four discs the size of ice-hockey pucks.

CBU-105炸弹落下过程中自行裂开，每枚炸弹释放出10枚子弹药，子弹药在降落伞作用下速度减慢。每枚子弹药利用微型火箭旋转射出冰球大小的4个圆盘。

The 80 free-falling discs from the pair of bombs then scanned the ground with lasers and heat-detecting infra-red sensors to locate armoured vehicles. Those discs that identified a target exploded dozens of metres up. The blast propelled a tangerine-sized slug of copper down into the target, destroying it with the impact and the accompanying shrapnel. The soldiers in the 70 vehicles farther back in the column surrendered immediately.

两枚炸弹释放出来的80个自由落下的圆盘，利用激光发射器和热探测红外线感应器扫描地面以确定装甲车位置。确定目标位置之后，圆盘在离地几十米的空中爆炸。爆炸将橘子大小的铜弹射向目标，利用撞击力和弹片摧毁目标。伊拉克队伍后面的70辆装甲车中的士兵随即投降。

A kinder, gentler future

更宽容、更温和的未来

The CBU-105, however frightening, may actually point the way toward less violent warfare. Cluster munitions—which release bomblets to cover a wide area—are banned or tightly restricted by an international convention. But the CBU-105 and its cousins, known as sensor-fused weapons, are considered legal because very few discs remain unexploded on the battlefield. Those that fail to detect a target are supposed to self-destruct in the air. The trigger batteries of those that do not will quickly die, so duds are unlikely to kill civilians later.

无论CBU-105多么令人恐惧，实际上，它可能令战争更加温和。释放小炸弹以覆盖大范围地区的各种集束弹，受到国际公约禁止或严格限制。但CBU-105和同类产品被称为传感器融合武器，由于极少有未爆炸的圆盘留在战场上而被认为合法。那些没有探测到目标的圆盘，理应在空中自毁。即使没有自毁，它们的触发电池也会很快耗尽，所以哑弹不可能在以后炸死平民。

Crucially, the manufacturer of the CBU-105, Textron Defense Systems, of Wilmington, Massachusetts, is improving sensors to allow the weapon to distinguish the heat signatures of cars, buses and homes from those of military hardware. If there is such a thing as a humanitarian bomb, this might be it.

重要的是，CBU-105的制造商，马萨诸塞州维明顿的达信防御系统公司正在改进感应器，以帮助炸弹区分军事装备和汽车、公共汽车、民房的热量信号。要是有人道主义炸弹存在，或许CBU-105就是。

By contrast, consider another sort of new weapon. The explosion of Russia’s “Father of All Bombs” approaches that of a small nuclear weapon; it would flatten many city blocks. In 2007, the government showed it off proudly on prime-time television. To most military men, such a bomb is not a PR coup, but an embarrassment.

相比之下，想想另一种新武器。俄罗斯的“所有炸弹他爹” 爆炸当量接近一枚小型核弹，会将许多街区夷为平地。2007年，俄政府在电视黄金时段炫耀这种武器。对许多军人来说，这种炸弹并不是公关上的重大成就，反而是一种令人难堪的东西。

译者：hddmail126
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Apple unveils the iPad
苹果公布iPad

Steve Jobs and the tablet of hope
史蒂夫-乔布斯和他的平板之寄托(原译：充满希望的史蒂夫-乔布斯和平板电脑)

The innovation machine churns out another game-changing device
苹果公司再“耍”电脑新花样(原译：创新产品搅局，改变游戏规则)

Getty Images

Jan 28th 2010 | SAN FRANCISCO | From The Economist print edition

“HEROES and heroics” is one of the central themes of the current season at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, which prides itself on showcasing contemporary artists who challenge conventional ways of doing things. On January 27th the centre played host to one of the heroes of the computing industry: Steve Jobs, the boss of Apple, who launched the company’s latest creation, the iPad. Mr Jobs also has a reputation for showcasing the unconventional. He did not disappoint.

旧金山前卫艺术中心本季的中心主题之一是“英雄与壮举”，该中心以展出标新立异的当代艺术家作品而引以为荣。1月27号前卫艺术中心为计算机行业的英雄之一做东：史蒂夫-乔布斯，苹果公司的老板，在此推出苹果的最新设计——the iPad。乔布斯先生同样也因标新立异而享有盛誉。他，没有令人失望。

The iPad, which looks like an oversized Apple iPhone and boasts a colour screen measuring almost ten inches (25cm), promises to change the landscape of the computing world. It is just half an inch thick and weighs 1.5lb (680 grams). “It’s so much more intimate than a laptop, and so much more capable than a smartphone,” Mr Jobs said of the device, which will be available in late March.

The iPad看起来像是一款特大号的苹果iPhone手机，这款“iPhone”手机的彩屏有近10英寸（25厘米）那么夸张。The iPad有望让计算机界焕然一新(原译：为之焕然一新)。它仅有半英寸厚1.5磅重（680克）。The iPad将于三月底面市，乔布斯先生称它“比笔记本电脑更为贴心，比智能手机功能更多。”。

The new iPad has important limitations, which critics were quick to point out. It does not have a camera or a phone and users cannot run multiple applications on it at the same time. But Apple should be able to correct such flaws in due course. Together with a host of other touch-screen “tablet” computers that are expected to reach shops over the next year or so, the iPad looks set to revolutionise the way in which digital media are consumed in homes, schools and offices.

批评家们很快就指出，新iPad有很大缺陷。它没有摄像功能或者电话功能，而且用户无法运行多应用同时操作。但苹果公司应该会有能力及时修正这样的瑕疵。the iPad连同许多其它明年有望面市的触摸屏式“平板”电脑，即将彻底扫清数字媒体进入家庭，学校和办公场所的障碍。

The flood of devices is likely to have a profound impact on parts of the media business that are already being turned upside-down by the internet. The move from print to digital has not been easy for newspaper or magazine publishers. Readers have proved reluctant to pay for content on the web. Companies are unwilling to pay as much for online advertisements as for paper ones—hardly surprising, given the amount of space on offer. The iPad will probably accelerate the shift away from printed matter towards digital content, which could worsen the industry’s pain in the short term. Yet publishers hope that tablets will turn out to be the 21st-century equivalent of the printed page, offering them compelling new ways to present their content and to charge for it. “This is really a chance for publishers to seize on a second life,” says Phil Asmundson of Deloitte, a consultancy.

因为各种先进设备的涌现，传媒业中那些已经被互联网弄得天翻地覆的媒体公司可能会深受影响。对于报社或杂志出版商来说，从印刷转变到数字化并非易事。已证实读者是不愿为网页内容付费的。相比平媒广告，公司不愿对在线广告付出同样的广告费——这毫不令人奇怪，因为广告所占面积太小。(原译：在线广告的收入会和纸制上的一样多？传媒公司对此不抱希望——毫不令人惊奇)。The iPad将加速印刷物品朝数字化内容的转变，这在短期内会使传媒业雪上加霜。出版商希望平板会成为21世纪的出版物，能让他们以匠心独具的新方法来送出内容和对内容收费(原译：这使他们以强制性的新方法来送出内容和对内容收费)。“对于出版商来说，这真的是重获新生的机会，”德勒咨询公司的 Phil Asmundson称。

It does not come as a surprise, then, that Apple has already attracted some blue-chip media brands to the iPad’s platform. During his presentation Mr Jobs revealed that the company had struck deals with leading publishers such as Penguin and Simon & Schuster. They will provide books for the iPad, to be found and paid for in Apple’s new iBooks online store. More agreements ought to be signed before the first iPads are shipped in March. Users will also be able to download applications that give them access to electronic versions of newspapers such as the New York Times, which presented an iPad app at the launch.

于是，苹果公司把一些优质的名牌媒体公司吸引到the iPad平台上，就看起来就不那么令人惊奇了。展示期间，乔布斯先生公布苹果公司已跟Penguin,Simon & Schuster.等出版业领军人物签订了合作协议。它们将给iPad提供书籍用来创办苹果公司的iBooks网店，同时也作为给该网店的报偿。大部分协议应该会在三月首批iPad面市之前签定。推出iPad后，纽约时报等电子版报纸会出现在iPad的app上，用户届时可通过下载应用程序看到它们。

Apple’s media partners no doubt have mixed feelings about dealing with Mr Jobs. Apple is now widely demonised in the music industry for dominating the digital downloading business with its iTunes store. The firm has been able to control the price of music, boosting sales of iPods but not bringing the record companies a great deal of money. That said, Apple did provide a way for the music business to make a profit online, which had hitherto eluded it. Apple’s sleek iPhone has also given plenty of content producers a platform on which they can charge for their wares.

苹果公司的媒体合作伙伴们觉得与乔布斯先生合作无疑就像打翻了五味瓶一样。由于iTunes网店统治数字音乐的缘故，苹果公司现在在音乐界可是臭名远扬。苹果公司能够控制音乐价格了，这抬升了iPods的价格但却对唱片公司赚钱没什么帮助。苹果确实为音乐商户提供了在网络上赢利的方式，只是它们至今还未见成效(原译：那就是说，苹果公司提供了一种音乐交易的方式，从而在网络上获得了利润。苹果至今对此避而不答。苹果那外表光滑的iPhone 也替很多内容制造者提供了收费赚钱的平台(原译：苹果那外表光滑的iPhone也让很多内容制造者赚了钱)。

The firm’s record suggests that it will be able to make one of the computing industry’s most fervent wishes come true. Technology companies have repeatedly tried to make a success of tablets or similar devices. But the zone between laptops and mobile phones has been something of a Bermuda Triangle for device-makers, points out Roger Kay of Endpoint Technologies, a consultancy. “Products launched in there have usually disappeared from the radar screen,” he says.

苹果公司的纪录表明自己能够使计算机业最强烈的愿望之一变为现实。科技公司们多次努力尝试，希望能在平板或同类产品上获得成功(原译：它多次地努力尝试，终于成功造出了平板等类似设备)。但是介于笔记本电脑和移动电话之间的领域对电脑元件厂商来说从来都是百慕大三角般的神秘和充满危险。终点科技公司顾问罗杰-凯指出。“以前推出介于笔记本电脑和移动电话之间的产品，现在即使用雷达都找不到了，”他称。

Among them are previous generations of tablet-style computers. In the 1990s various companies experimented with the machines, including Apple. When its Newton personal digital assistant failed to take off, Mr Jobs killed the project. Tablets were once again briefly in the limelight when Microsoft’s Bill Gates predicted they would soon become people’s primary computing device—powered, of course, by his company’s software. That did not come to pass because consumers were put off by tablets’ high prices, clunky user interfaces and limited capabilities. Instead the devices, which cost almost as much as proper PCs, have remained a niche product used primarily in industries such as health care and construction.

先前消失的产品中也有平板型的电脑。上世纪90年代，包括苹果公司在内有许多公司研发平板电脑。由于牛顿掌上电脑未能取得成功，乔布斯先生裁掉了该项目。当微软老板比尔-盖茨预言它们将很快成为人们主要的计算机设备时（当然，是用微软公司软件的装置），平板电脑也只是在公众的视线里一闪而过。预言没能实现的原因是由于平板电脑高昂的价格，粗糙的用户界面和有限的功能阻碍了消费者购买。平板电脑反而是作为主要用于医疗保健和建筑业等行业的小众产品而保留下来。

Why are tablets causing so much excitement these days? One reason is that innovations in display, battery and microprocessing technologies have greatly reduced their cost. Apple’s iPad is priced at between $499 for the basic version and $829 for one with lots of memory and a 3G wireless connection, bringing it within the reach of ordinary consumers. Another reason for optimism is that interfaces have improved greatly. The iPad boasts a big virtual keyboard, which pops up when needed. It also features multi-touch, meaning that two fingers can be used to change the size of a photo. Furthermore, tablets will benefit from the fact that people have become accustomed to buying and consuming content in digital form (see chart).

为什么这些天来平板能造成如此轰动？一个原因是科技革新使显示，电池和微处理技术大大减少了成本。苹果电脑基本型号的iPad定价为499美元，而容量更大和带有3G无线功能的版本定价为829美元。这样的价格让一般消费者都能买得起iPad。另一个乐观的原因是界面有了很大改善。令The iPad洋洋得意的大号虚拟键盘，即用即弹出。The iPad还有多指感触这一大特色，使用者只要用两根手指头就能够把一张图片调大调小了。而且，平板之所以能从中获益，是因为人们如今已经习惯购买和消费数字化形式的内容产品了(见图)。

All this explains why other firms are eyeing the tablet market too. Dozens of prototypes were on show at a consumer-electronics trade fair in Las Vegas earlier this month, including ones from Motorola, Lenovo and Dell. Jen-Hsun Huang, the chief executive of NVIDIA, a maker of graphics chips, reckons this is the first time he has seen telecoms firms, computer-makers and consumer-electronics companies all equally keen to produce the same product. “The tablet is the first truly convergent electronic device,” he says.

所有这些就解释了为什么其它公司也目不转睛盯着平板市场。本月初，成打的样品在拉斯维加斯消费电子交易博览会上展示，当中包括摩托罗拉，联想和戴尔等知名厂商的产品。显卡制造商英伟达公司的首席执行官黄仁勋认为，这是他第一次看到电信公司，计算机制造厂商和消费电子公司不约而同地热衷于同一种产品。“平板电脑是第一个真正汇聚群英的电子产品(原译：平板是第一个真正的收敛型电子产品)，”他称。

Netbooks and e-books
上网笔记本与电子书

The iPad and other tablets could shake up the computing scene. There has been some speculation that they could dent sales of low-end PCs, including Apple’s MacBook. But a more likely scenario is that they eat into sales of netbooks, the cheap mini-laptops that are used mainly for web surfing and watching videos. Netbooks have been on a roll recently, with global sales rising by 72% to $11.4 billion last year, according to DisplaySearch, a market research company. That makes them a tempting target.

The iPad同其它平板产品将撼动计算机业。，有部分预测认为，包括苹果公司的MacBook在内，虽然平板产品能从低端个人台式电脑市场分到一杯羹，但是大部分的盈利还要看它们在上网笔记本产品上的表现。上网笔记本是一种便宜的迷你笔记本电脑，主要用于上网观看视频。上网本最近火热大卖，据市场调研公司-显像资讯管理顾问公司调查显示，去年上网本全球销售额升幅72%，达到了114亿美元。这使得众平板产品无不觊觎于上网笔记本。

Apple’s new device also poses a threat to dedicated e-readers such as Amazon’s Kindle, though these will probably remain popular with the most voracious bookworms. Apple’s long-expected entry into the tablet market has already forced e-reader firms to consider making their devices more versatile and exciting. “You will see more readers using colour and video over the next five years,” predicts Richard Archuleta of Plastic Logic, which produces the Que proReader. And more makers of e-readers may mimic Amazon’s recent decision to let third-party developers create software for its line of Kindles.

尽管在如饥似渴般的书虫眼里，像亚马逊Kindle这样的电子书阅读器依然风韵犹存，但是苹果公司的新产品已对它们虎视眈眈。苹果公司对进入平板市场朝思暮想，这已迫使电子阅读器公司打算把它们的产品变得功能更多和更令人感兴趣。“接下来的五年中，你将看到越来越多的读者使用彩色和能够播放视频的电子阅读器，” 生产Que proReader的塑胶逻辑公司的Richard Archuleta预计道。而且越来越多的电子阅读器生产商会仿效亚马逊公司最近对Kindles的做法，让第三方为电子阅读器设计上线软件。

Book publishers are quietly hoping that Apple’s entry into e-books will help to reduce the clout of Amazon: the Kindle has 60% of the e-reader market, according to Forrester, a research firm. They are also excited by the opportunities that tablets offer to combine various media. Bradley Inman, the boss of Vook, a firm that mixes texts with video and links to people’s social networks, believes the iPad will trigger an outpouring of creativity. “Its impact will be the equivalent of adding sound to movies or colour to TV,” he says.

图书出版商默默地希望苹果公司进入电子图书市场会有助于减弱亚马逊的影响力：据福里斯特研究公司调查，Kindle拥有60%的电子图书市场份额。图书出版商们还因为平板电脑有机会使各种媒体结合到一起而兴奋不已。经营内容集视频与社交网络于一体的Vook公司老板Bradley Inman坚信iPad会让创造力如泉涌般多起来。“它的影响力之大，就如同给电影加入了声音或电视加上了色彩，”他认为。

Newspaper and magazine publishers are also thrilled by tablets’ potential. Their big hope is that the devices will allow them to generate revenues both from readers and advertisers. People have proven willing to pay for long-form journalism on e-readers. But these devices do not allow publishers to present their content in creative ways and most cannot carry advertisements. Skiff, a start-up spun out of Hearst, is a rare exception to this rule. Its 11.5-inch reader is large enough to show off all elements of a magazine’s design and accommodates advertising too.

报纸和杂志出版商也因为平板电脑的潜力而兴奋不已。他们最大的希望就是平板电脑能让他们从读者和广告商身上都赚到钱。业已证明人们是愿意为电子阅读器上的长篇新闻付款的。但是目前这些电子阅读器还无法让出版商们以创造性地方式把他们的内容赠送出去，同时大部分电子阅读器不能刊登广告。由赫斯特公司推出的Skiff是屈指可数不墨守此归的产品。它的11.5英寸阅读器大到足以在显示杂志设计的全部内容时，还能显示广告。

非常棒，但是开关在哪儿呢？
EPA
Apple’s arrival in the tablet market means that publishers will have to develop digital content for these devices, as well as for e-readers and smart-phones. Many will prove unable or unwilling to do so themselves. That may boost firms such as Zinio, which has developed a digital-publishing model called Unity. This takes publications’ content, repurposes it for different gadgets and stores it in “the cloud”, the term used to describe giant pools of shared data-processing capacity. Users pay once for the content and can access it on various Zinio-enabled devices, increasing the chances that it will be consumed.

苹果公司进入平板电脑市场意味着出版商们不仅要为电子阅读器和智能手机订制数字内容，还必须要为这些平板电脑订制数字内容。许多出版商自身或许没有能力或者不愿这么做，这可能就促进了像Zinio这样的公司的发展。Zinio已经开发出一种叫Unity的数字出版模型。它能改变出版物的内容，以使出版物能够适合不同的小型设备，以及存储在“云端”上——术语，形容分享数据处理量的巨型共享存储池。用户给一段新闻内容付费一次后就能在不同Zinio化的设备上阅读，这增加了消费新闻内容的机会。

Apple has other ambitions for the iPad. It hopes it will become a popular gaming machine and has designed the device so that many of the games among the 140,000 apps available for other Apple products will run on it straight away. The company has also revamped its iWork suite of word-processing, spreadsheet and presentation software for the iPad in an effort to ensure that the new device will catch on with business folk.

苹果公司对iPad还有其它雄心壮志，它希望iPad会成为一款流行游戏机，而且已经设计出了驱动程序，以便其它苹果公司产品的14万种适用程序当中的游戏能够直接在iPad上运行。苹果公司还修改了iWork套装软件的文字处理，电子表格和演示软件，以示其能够迎合商业人士。

Apple’s shareholders are no doubt hoping that the iPad will live up to its billing as a seminal device in the history of computing. They have already seen the company’s share price soar. Defying the recession, on January 25th Apple announced the best quarterly results in its 34-year history, with revenues rising to $15.7 billion and profits to $3.4 billion—an increase of 32% and 50% respectively over the previous year. They will be keeping their fingers crossed that the iPad turns into another billion-dollar hit. Whether or not that turns out to be the case, Mr Jobs has already proven heroic enough to merit a portrait on the Yerba Buena Center’s walls.

作为计算机史上的创意之作，苹果公司的股东们无疑都希望iPad在赢利上能够名符其实。他们已看到公司的股价高涨了。无视于经济的衰退，1月25号苹果公司公布公司34年历史以来最佳的季度成绩：季度收入增加到157亿美元，利润增加到34亿美元——分别比去年增加了32%和50%。他们希望iPad好运，成为另一款日进斗金的流行产品。无论这成真与否，乔布斯先生都已经证明了一项壮举，它足以与挂在前卫艺术中心墙上的任何一幅画像相媲美。

译者：triumph02
如想与译者本人对该文进行切磋，请到如下链接：
http://ecocn.org/bbs/viewthread.php?tid=30475&extra=page%3D1&page=1

A biography of Friedrich Engels
弗里德里希•恩格斯传 [注1]

A very special business angel
The self-effacing friend who enabled “Das Kapital” to be written [注2]

一位非常特别的商界天使：是这位不求闻达的朋友让《资本论》的写作成为可能

Aug 13th 2009
From The Economist print edition

Marx’s General: The Revolutionary Life of Friedrich Engels. By Tristram Hunt. Metropolitan Books; 448 pages; $32. Published in Britain as “The Frock-Coated Communist: The Revolutionary Life of Friedrich Engels”. Allen Lane; £25. Buy from Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk

《马克思的将军：弗里德里希•恩格斯的革命生涯》。作者特里斯特兰•亨特，大都会出版社出版。448页；32美元。在英国的书名是《穿长礼服的共产主义者：弗里德里希•恩格斯的革命生涯》。艾伦•雷恩出版社出版；25英镑。可从Amazon.com和Amazon.co.uk网站购买。

WHEN the financial crisis took off last autumn, Karl Marx’s “Das Kapital”, originally published in 1867, whooshed up bestseller lists. The first book to describe the relentless, all-consuming and global nature of capitalism had suddenly gained new meaning. But Marx had never really gone away, whereas Friedrich Engels—the man who worked hand in glove with him for most of his life and made a huge contribution to “Das Kapital”—is almost forgotten. A new biography by a British historian, Tristram Hunt, makes a good case for giving him greater credit.

去年秋天金融危机骤然降临时，1867年初版的卡尔•马克思的《资本论》在各个畅销书排行榜上飞速跃升。该书第一次对资本主义冷酷无情、吞噬一切和全球扩张的本性进行了描述，现在突然有了新的涵义。其实马克思从未真正离开过我们，不过弗里德里希•恩格斯－－这位大半生都在和马克思亲密合作并对《资本论》做出了巨大贡献的人－－却几乎被人遗忘了。英国历史学家特里斯特兰•亨特所作的新的传记有力的说明了恩格斯的功绩应该得到更大的承认。

The two men became friends in Paris in 1844 when both were in their mid-20s, and remained extremely close until Marx died in 1883. Both were Rhinelanders (our picture shows Engels standing behind Marx in the press room of Rheinische Zeitung which they edited jointly) but came from very different backgrounds: Marx’s father was a Jewish lawyer turned Christian; Engels’s a prosperous Protestant cotton-mill owner. Marx studied law, then philosophy; Engels, the black sheep of his family, was sent to work in the family business at 17. While doing his military service in 1841 in Berlin, he was exposed to the ferment of ideas swirling around the Prussian capital.

马恩二人成为朋友是在1844年的巴黎，当时他们都是二十五岁上下。从那以后他们一直关系极为紧密，直至马克思于1883年逝世。两人都是莱茵人（本文的图片中恩格斯站在马克思身后，地点是他们共同编辑的《莱茵时报》印刷车间），但家庭背景很不一样：马克思的父亲是一名犹太裔律师，后来皈依基督教；恩格斯的父亲是新教教徒，也是一名成功的棉纺厂厂主。马克思先是学习法律，后来又研习了哲学；恩格斯不被家人看好，才17岁就被打发到家族企业去干活。1841年恩格斯在柏林服兵役，在此期间他接触到了当时在这个普鲁士首都躁动着和流传着的各式各样的观点。

Next, he went to work for the Manchester branch of the family business, Ermen & Engels. Manchester’s “cottonopolis” in the mid-19th century was a manufacturer’s heaven and a working man’s hell, and it provided an invaluable lesson for Engels: that economic factors were the basic cause of the clash between different classes of society. By 1845, when he was just 24, he had not only learnt how to be a successful capitalist; he had also written a coruscatingly anti-capitalist work, “The Condition of the Working Class in England”, which charted the inhumanity of modern methods of production in minute detail.

之后他去了其家族企业在英国曼彻斯特的分厂工作，该分厂的名称是俄们－恩格斯。十九世纪中期曼彻斯特的“棉都”是制造商的天堂，工人的地狱，也为恩格斯上了极为宝贵的一课，让他意识到经济因素是不同社会阶级之间冲突的基本原因。到1845年他才24岁时，他就不仅已经学会了如何做一名成功的资本家，而且已经写出了一本才华横溢的反资本主义著作，即《英国工人阶级状况》[注3]。该书以具体而微的细节描述了现代生产方法的惨无人道。

Engels left Manchester to work with Marx on the “Communist Manifesto” and the two of them spent the late 1840s criss-crossing Europe to chase the continental revolutions of the time, ending up in England. Marx had started work on “Das Kapital”, but there was a problem. He had by then acquired an aristocratic German wife, a clutch of small children and aspirations for a comfortable bourgeois lifestyle, but no means of support.

为了和马克思合写“共产主义宣言”，恩格斯离开了曼彻斯特。他们两个人在1840年代后期穿行于欧洲各处，试图赶上当时欧洲大陆各国的革命，最后他们在英格兰安顿下来。马克思那时已经开始了《资本论》一书上的工作，但他碰到了一个问题。他当时已经获得了一位来自贵族家庭的德国妻子，一窝嗷嗷待哺的孩子，同时还希望过上舒适的资产阶级生活，却没有支持这一切的物质手段。

Engels (whose name resembles the word for “angel” in German) offered an astoundingly big-hearted solution: he would go back to Manchester to resume life in the detested family cotton business and provide Marx with the money he needed to write his world-changing treatise. For the next 20 years Engels worked grumpily away, handing over half his generous income to an ever more demanding Marx. He also collaborated intensively on the great work, contributing many ideas, practical examples from business and much-needed editorial attention. When at last volume I of “Das Kapital” was finished, he extricated himself from the business and moved to London to be near the Marx family, enjoying life as an Economist-reading rentier and intellectual.

恩格斯（其家姓类似德语中“天使”[Engel]一词）提出了一个解决的办法，其慷慨让人震惊：他将回到曼彻斯特那让他厌恶的家族棉纺厂里重新过活，同时给马克思提供必要的资金以让后者写出他改变世界的论文。在其后的20年间，恩格斯任劳但不任怨的经营棉纺厂，将其丰厚收入的一半交给需求越来越多的马克思。他也和马克思围绕该部巨著进行了大量的合作，为之贡献了许多想法和来自工商业的实例，还为该书进行了亟需的编辑和校对。当《资本论》第一卷终于完成后，他从商务中抽身出来搬到了伦敦以便住在马克思一家附近。他成了一名食利者和知识人，阅读《经济学人》，享受生活。

Engels was an enigma. Gifted, energetic and fascinated by political ideas, he was nevertheless ready to play second fiddle to Marx. “Marx was a genius; we others were at best talented,” he declared after his friend’s death. Mr Hunt does a brilliant job of setting the two men’s endeavours in the context of the political, social and philosophical currents at the time. It makes for a complex story that can be hard to follow but is well worth persevering with.

恩格斯是一个迷。他天分甚高，充满活力，对各种政治观点着迷，但他却甘当马克思的副手。在他的朋友逝世后，他这样宣称：“马克思是个天才，我们其他人至多是有才而已。”亨特先生非常出色的将他们二人的奋斗置于当时的政治、社会和哲学潮流的环境之中来考察。这使得他的故事纷繁复杂，读者要理清头绪可能会有困难，但坚持把该书读下来却是非常值得的。

Tall and handsome, Engels had a taste not just for ideas but for the good life—wine, women, riding with the Cheshire hunt—and seems to have felt little sense of irony that all these things were paid for by the proletariat’s back-breaking labour. His domestic life was much more unconventional than Marx’s. He lived, on and off, with a semi-literate Irish working-class girl, Mary Burns; then, when she died, with her sister, Lizzy, whom he married only on her deathbed. He had no children, though he chivalrously took responsibility for a boy whom Marx had fathered with a housekeeper.

恩格斯身材魁梧，容貌潇洒，他不仅喜欢思想，也喜爱快乐的生活—美酒、女人、和柴郡的猎狐队伍一道打猎――他用以支付这一切的是无产者累死累活的劳动，但他似乎没怎么觉出这其中的反讽。他的家庭生活远比马克思的更为离经叛道。他和一个叫玛丽•伯恩斯的字都没有认全的爱尔兰女工断断续续在一起生活过；在她死后，他又和她的妹妹丽琪生活在了一起，直到后者临终时才娶了她。他没有小孩，虽然在一名女仆生下了马克思的一个儿子后他骑士般的承担了责任。

Engels’s sacrifices continued after Marx’s death. He not only carried on funding the Marx family and their various hangers-on, but also spent years pulling together the chaotic notes Marx left behind for volumes II and III of “Das Kapital”. Inevitably there were lots of loose ends which Engels tied up as he saw fit, and sometimes the results were more revolutionary than the author may have intended. In volume III, where Marx discussed the tendency of companies’ profitability to fall and noted that this might lead to the “shaking” of capitalist production, Engels substituted the word “collapse”, opening up the text to much more radical interpretations by 20th-century Marxists.

恩格斯的自我牺牲在马克思死后也未停止。他不仅继续为马克思一家和他们的追随者提供资金，而且花费了多年时间整理马克思为《资本论》第二和第三卷留下来的混乱的笔记。[注4] 恩格斯难免要将很多马克思没有很好解决的问题按照他认为合适的方式解决，有时这样改动后的文字比作者本来可能想说的更富革命性。在第三卷，马克思讨论了公司的利润率会趋于下降，于是他提出这也许会导致资本主义生产的“动摇”。恩格斯在此处用“崩溃”一词替代了“动摇”，从而使得该文本后来能够被二十世纪的马克思主义者们赋予远为激进的阐释。

When Engels died in 1895, he eschewed London’s Highgate cemetery where his friend was laid to rest. Self-effacing to the last, he had his ashes scattered off England’s coast at Eastbourne—the scene of happy holidays with the Marxes.

当恩格斯在1895年逝世时，他避开了伦敦的海格特公墓－－他的朋友长眠于斯。直到最后一刻都不求闻达的他让人将他的骨灰撒在了靠近伊斯特伯恩的英吉利海峡――在那儿他和马克思一家度过了许多愉快的假日。

[注1]：这篇文章载于去年八月的一期《经济学人》，读的时候就想把它翻成中文，但一直没有找到时间，现在总算了却了这桩心愿。马克思和恩格斯的学说的功过我不想去谈，但是他们二人的思想直到今天仍然值得我们后人认真研究和学习（当然不是指为了不那么高尚的目的强迫别人进行的那种所谓学习――那实在是对“学习”这个词的玷污――汉语中被这样污染了的词语还有不少）。《经济学人》这篇书评当然更多的着眼于马恩二人深挚的友谊，读来让人感念恩格斯对朋友的无私。能得恩格斯这样铁杆的朋友实乃老马人生的一大幸事啊。

[注2]: 《资本论》一书的德语书名是Das Kapital，但它的英语书名并不是The Capital， 而是Capital，即没有定冠词。Capital指资本时不可数，所以除非当它特指某人或某公司等的资本，前面不应加定冠词。

[注3]：仅从英文书名上讲，The Condition of the Working Class in England中的England应该译为英格兰而非英国，因为这二者并不是一回事（后者在恩格斯的时代还包括爱尔兰的全部，当然也包括英格兰和苏格兰）。不过既然中国国内对此书书名的翻译向来都是《英国工人阶级状况》，此处也就依从这个习惯译法。

[注4]：Hangers-on也可指食客，这可能更符合这篇《经济学人》文章作者的原意。只是感觉上中文的“食客”二字比hangers-on刺耳，所以先不用罢。

译者：Uniquorn
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Tech.view
科技·视点

Decimated
十进制时间的过去……

Jan 15th 2010 | LOS ANGELES
From Economist.com

What if Napoleon hadn’t abolished decimal time?
如果拿破仑当初没有废止十进制时间？

SINCE the start of 2010, your correspondent has amused himself by interpreting the date as a binary number, and then converting that into its decimal equivalent. Expressed internationally as dd.mm.yy, the first day of this year was 010110. In decimal form, that works out to be 24+22+21=22. The game is pointless, of course. But it has made him ponder the whole date and time arrangement people take for granted.

2010年一开始，笔者多了个乐子——把日期转换成一个二进制数，然后再把这个二进制数转换成相应的十进制数。国际通行的日期标注法是“日.月.年”，所以，2010年的第一天就可以表示成010110，转换成十进制就是24+22+21=22。这种游戏当然没什么意义，但是笔者却由此思考起来人们已习以为常的整套日期和时间的表示法。

There are only four years a century when you can play this little game. In the current century, two years (2000 and 2001) have already passed. Like the previous pair, the two that remain (2010 and 2011) contain only three days (1st, 10th and 11th) in three months (January, October and November) that lend themselves to this phoney binary treatment.

每个世纪只有四年可以玩这个小游戏。本世纪已经过去了两年（2000年和2001年）。剩下的这两年和过去这两年一样，每年只有三个月（1月，10月，11月）的三天（1号，10号，11号）可以用这种形式上的二进制方法表示。

Obviously, the smallest binary number in this century’s set was January 1st at the turn of the millennium (010100). The largest will be November 11th next year, when all the bits in the six-digit sequence are present (111111). In decimal terms, that is equal to 25+24+23+22+21+20= 63. There is nothing magical about such a number, though November 11th does happen to be the birthday of a member of your correspondent’s family. For his own amusement, 63 of something will figure in the celebration.

很明显，本世纪最小的二进制数是千禧之交的一月的第一天（010100），最大的将是明年的11月11日，届时这个六位数字的所有数码都会是1（111111）；用十进制表示，就是25+24+23+22+21+20= 63。这样一个数字没什么神奇的，但11月11日却恰巧是笔者一位家人的生日。有趣的是，明年在他庆祝生日之时，他是63岁。

All this playing around with binary numbers has made him wonder why binary time—or, for that matter, decimal time—never caught on in the Western world. Decimal time has been tried on many occasions. Indeed, a decimal calendar based on a ten-month year was used by Romans during the time of Romulus and Remus. Their calendar ran from March to December. The two missing months needed to make up a solar year were dismissed as winter when nothing grew or happened—and therefore not worth worrying about.

通过摆弄这些二进制数，笔者不由引发一个疑问：二进制时间——或者十进制时间——为什么从未在西方世界流行开来。人类迄今为止已多次尝试使用过十进制时间；而且，在罗莫路和勒莫时代，罗马人使用的是每年10个月份的十进制日历——从3月到12月。阳历年缺失的这两个月被作为冬天而舍弃掉，因为在那段期间，万物沉寂，草木不生——所以，这两个月有没有都无所谓。

The ancient Egyptians were far smarter. For three millennia before Christ, they used a 12-month calendar, with each month comprising three ten-day weeks. Five rogue days were tacked on the end of the cycle to complete the solar year. By the time of Augustus, the so-called Alexandrian calendar had even incorporated an additional day for leap years. This was essentially the decimal calendar that the French introduced during the revolution. But the French Republic’s official ten-day week lasted for little more than a dozen years before Napoleon abolished it in 1806.

而古埃及人要更智慧。在公元前的三千年间，他们使用的是12个月份的日历，每个月由3个十天的周组成。在每个太阳年年尾，会用5个机动日来补全。到奥古斯都时期，“亚历山大历”甚至在闰年包含额外的一天。法国在大革命期间弄的“十进制日历”本质上来说就是这种玩意。但是法兰西共和国官方这种10天一周的日历仅仅持续了10多年，就在1806年被拿破仑废止掉了。

Ironically, when the French invented the metric system in 1795, two years after they changed the calendar, they decimalised everything except time. There were base units for length, area, volume, weight and even currency. But seconds and minutes, hours and days, weeks and months were left unscathed.

颇具讽刺意味的是，当法国人在1795年发明了十进制时，也就是他们更改日历的两年后，他们把除时间以外的所有东西都改成了十进制，包括基本度量单位，比如长度、面积、体积、重量，甚至货币。但是秒、分、小时、日、周、月却丝毫未动。

That, along with the failure to decimalise the compass, was perhaps the metrication commission’s biggest setback. Its august president, the noted mathematician Joseph-Louis Lagrange, tried in vain to get the Republic to adopt the déci-jour and centi-jour (a tenth and a hundredth of a day, respectively). But the decimal calendar was deemed enough of a gesture to the new age of rationalism, even though it did not comply with the strict divisions and multiples of ten, and used none of the metric system’s prefixes (milli-, centi-, deci-, deca-, hecto-, kilo-, etc).

这些，再加上指南针十进制化的失败，可能是十进制委员会最大的挫败。该委员会不苟言笑的主席，也就是著名数学家约瑟夫·路易斯·拉格朗日，努力要让法国人接受“十分日”和“百分日”（分别是将每天十等分和一百等分），却徒劳无功。但是十进制日历却被认为足以作为向新时代理性主义的一次敬礼，尽管十进制日历并未遵循严格的十等分和十等倍法，并且没有使用任何一个十进制的前缀（milli-，centi-， deci-，deca-，hecto-，kilo-等）。

Even so, the idea of a centi-jour (14.4 minutes) has cropped up on several occasions since. One reason is that a ten-hour clock, with each hour divided into 100 decimal minutes, and each decimal minute sub-divided into 100 decimal seconds, would make navigation easier—provided, of course, you had a decimal sextant and compass to go with it. Decimal time and longitude would then correlate directly without the need for logarithmic conversion tables. Even the Royal Geographical Society in Victorian England was keen on decimal navigation, and published tables to convert sexagesimal angles and hours into centi-jours and their decimal subdivisions.

尽管如此，从那时起，百分日（每一等分14.4分钟）的概念却已见诸于有些场合。一个原因就是十小时的钟（每小时被分成100个十进制分，每个十进制分被分成100个十进制秒）会让航海变得更简单——当然前提是你要有一个十进制的六分仪和罗盘作为辅助。这样一来，十进制时间就会与经度直接相关联，对数转换表就变得不需要了。在维多利亚时期的英格兰，甚至皇家地理学会都对十进制航海很感兴趣，发行了将六十等分的角和小时转换成百分日及其十等分次级的换算表。

Numerous clocks were made in France and elsewhere during the 19th century with faces showing both the numbers 1-12 for standard time and 1-10 for decimal time. The supposed advantage was that any observer with a decimal chronometer and a view of the sun’s height above the horizon would then know instantly where on the planet he was. With 100 decimal degrees (or “gons” as they became known) to a right-angle, and the distance from the pole to the equator being almost exactly 10,000 kilometres, 1 km along the surface subtends an angle of one centigon (a hundredth of a decimal degree) at the centre of the Earth. Had it come to pass, decimal time and decimal angular measurement might have done for the 19th century what GPS did for the 20th.

在19世纪的法国和世界其它地方做了很多这样的表：表面上既显示表示标准时间的1到12，还显示表示十进制时间的1到10。人们认为这种表的优势在于：任何人只要有这样一块十进制表，再能看到地平线以上太阳的高度，就会立刻知道他在地球上的位置。100个十进制度（更为流行的称法叫作“百分度”）就是一个直角，从极点到赤道的距离几乎就是10000公里；这两点就使得地球表面的一公里的地心夹角恰巧是1centigon （即1百分度的百分之一）。如果当初这些办法流行开来，十进制时间测量方法和十进制角度测量方法之于19世纪可能就会像GPS之于20世纪。

But the French were not the first to think of the ten-hour day, nor even the centi-jour. Like the Egyptians with their decimal calendar, the Chinese used decimal (not to mention duodecimal) time several millennia before Christ. Since the beginning of history, they have divided the day into a 100 equal parts called ke (14.4 minutes), and split each of those into 60 fen (14.4 seconds). When Jesuit missionaries introduced Western clocks to China in the 17th century, the local inhabitants simply changed the number of divisions in a day from 100 to 96, making a ke equal to exactly 15 minutes.

但是并不是法国人第一个想到十小时日的，百分日甚至也不是第一个。和埃及人的十进制日历一样，中国也早在公元前的几千年就使用十进制时间（十二进制时间就更不用说了）。很久很久以前，他们就把每天分成100等分，并且称作“刻（14.4分钟）”，并且把每一个刻成60“分（14.4秒）”。在耶稣会的传教士将西方的钟表引进中国之后，中国的老百姓就直接把每天从100等分改为96等分，这样1刻就正好是15分钟。

To this day, the term ke is used in China to denote “a quarter of a hour”. In Japan, the same character (pronounced either “koku” or “kizamu”) translates roughly into “carving out a small amount of time” and was used, until the Meiji era, to signify “hour”, while the character for fen (pronounced “fûn” in Japanese) is used to this day to denote “minute”.

今天的中国仍然用“刻”来表示“1/4小时”。在日本，同样一个字（音发作“koku”或 “kizamu”），大约可以翻译成“挤出一小点时间”，而且直到明治时期，这个字一直表示“小时”。但是“分”（在日语里发作“fûn”）这个字直到今天仍然表示“分钟”的意思。

Ultimately, the only unit of time that really matters is the second. Originally, the internationally accepted system of units known as SI (Système International d’Unités) defined the second as 1/86,400 of a mean solar day—simply the inverse of the number of seconds in 24 hours. But irregularities in the rotation of the Earth made that unreliable. Thus, in 1967, SI adopted a more precise definition based on the frequency of the radiation a caesium atom emits when it flips between two energy states. No ifs and buts, at absolute zero temperature, this is exactly 9,192,631,770 hertz.

到最后，真正起决定作用的时间单位就是秒了。国际通用的单位制体系SI（国际单位制）规定一秒等于一个平均太阳日的1/86400——简单来说就是24小时所含秒数的倒数。但是地球自转的不规律使得这个数值不可靠。所以，在1967年，SI采用了一个更为精确的制定办法，该办法基于一个铯原子在两个能级之间跃迁时的辐射频率。这个频率不存在“如果和但是”，绝对零度的条件下，9192631770赫兹，不会有任何偏差。

Physicists have no trouble using, on the one hand, picoseconds (trillionths of a second) or even femtoseconds (quadrillionths of a second) to discuss time at the atomic scale. They also talk cheerfully of 1018 seconds needed for light to travel from the farthest reaches of the universe. Likewise, in computing, “Unix Time” gives the date and time in terms of the number of seconds since January 1st 1970, and Microsoft’s “Filetime” is recorded as multiples of 100-nanosecond units since January 1st 1601.

在讨论原子级别时间的时候，物理学家用起皮秒（百万兆分之一秒）甚至飞秒（千万亿分之一秒）来都没任何不便。这是一方面。另一方面，这些人也会兴奋地谈论1018秒——这是从宇宙最远处传来的光运行所需的时间。同样，在计算机领域，Unix系统给出的时间“Unix Time”是从1970年1月1日以来经过的秒数，微软的“Filetime”是以100纳秒为单位记录的，开始时间为1601年1月1日。

But computer scientists are just as likely to divide their day into hexadecimal hours, with each hour broken up into hexadecimal minutes. (The 16-base hexadecimal system uses the numbers 0-9 followed by the letters A-F.) The hexadecimal day begins at midnight at .0000. One second after midnight, the time is .0001. Half a day later, noon arrives at .8000. A second before the next midnight is .FFFF. Got it? Your correspondent neither.

但是计算机学家同样也会把一天分成十六进制小时，每一小时又分成十六进制分钟。（十六进制这套系统使用的是数字0到9，后面接着A到F。）十六进制日始于午夜的.0000。一秒钟之后，时间变为.0001。半天过后，来到中午，此时时间为.8000。次日到来的前一秒钟是.FFFF。看懂了吗？笔者我同样没看懂。

In normal life, people have to go to work, arrange schedules, catch planes and trains, and pick up children from school at given times. The number of seconds needed to do such useful things has to be given names everyone recognises and agrees upon. It would be nice if such units of time were decimal multiples of one another. Unfortunately, here on planet Earth, with its decidedly undecimal sidereal year of 365-and-a-quarter days, that is just not going to happen.

在平日生活中，人们必须要在给定的时间上班工作，安排日程，赶飞机火车，去学校接孩子。做这些事情所需的一定量的秒数必须要给出个名字来，而且这些名字必须要人人都认识且达成一致。这样的时间单位上下级之间要都是以十倍进位就好了。但是不巧的是，在地球这个行星星球上，这种事不会发生，因为“恒星年（由365又1/4天所组成）是非十进制的”这一事实是确凿无差的。

译者：eastx
如想与译者本人对该文进行切磋，请到如下链接：http://bbs.ecocn.org/viewthread.php?tid=30359&extra=page%3D1

The state-of-the-union speech
奥巴马的国情咨文

The limits to verbiage
不说废话

The president’s speech was underwhelming, which was probably better than the alternative
总统演说并不精彩，也许这样更好

Jan 28th 2010 | From The Economist online

one thing you can generally count on when the lanky figure of Barack Obama approaches a podium is that you will hear a good speech; and the more trouble he is in, the better the speech is likely to be. He has never spoken more powerfully than just after losing the New Hampshire primary back in January 2008, or when the eruption of his pastor, Jeremiah Wright, threatened to derail him later that year. For his first state-of-the-union message on January 27th, the president needed something extra-special. His ratings are down below 50%, and the loss of a crucial Senate seat in Massachusetts a week earlier means that much of his domestic agenda, notably his efforts to reform health care, is stalled if not dead. But in place of the mighty oratory one might have expected, the president delivered an inordinately long, unrepentant but ultimately rather cautious speech that eschewed the tub-thumping and delivered a little bit to everyone.

当你看到奥巴马瘦长的身影走向演讲台的时候，你可以确定的一件事是，你将听到一场不错的演讲。并且，他越是麻烦缠身，他的演讲就越是精彩。他在2008年1月丢掉新罕布什尔州后或当年年底其牧师Jeremiah Wright威胁要抛弃他时的演说，声势都超越以往。1月27号在他的第一份国情咨文中，奥巴马总统需要一些特别不同的东西。他的支持率不到50%，而马萨诸塞州一个重要参议院席位的丢失意味着他很多的国内事务，特别是他的医改，即使不算完全没戏，至少也会受到阻碍。但是没有人们期待的说服力强的雄辩，总统带来的是一次相当长、没有后悔意味、但是总的说来很小心谨慎的演说，没有慷慨激昂，但涉及到了每一个人。

There were alternatives to the middle course he chose. He might have tacked to the right, in the hope of winning over Republicans, but he would probably have failed. He might have lurched to the left, embracing the sort of populism that seemed presaged by his post-Massachusetts declaration that he was “ready for a fight” with the banks, but that would have alienated the centre. So he chose to remain, just about, the pragmatist whom this newspaper endorsed back in November 2008. But he gave no sign of how he plans to pursue his agenda or solve the problems that are piling up around him.

除他选择的中间路线外，还有其他路线。他可能偏向过右翼，以期待获得共和党人的支持，但是他很可能已经失败。他可能倒向过左翼，信奉人民主义，这可从其后马萨诸塞州宣言中感觉出来，宣言中他宣布他做好了与银行战斗的准备。但是这会使他疏远中间派。所以，他决定继续担任本报于2008年11月支持的那个实用主义者的角色。但是如何达到他的目的，如何解决越积越多的问题，他还没有给出答案。

But what are you going to do about it?但是，你准备怎么办？

On the economy, Mr Obama tickled middle-class voters with a small-change package of family-oriented tax credits for child-care, student loans and suchlike. This sort of micro-targeting worked for Bill Clinton when he found himself in a hole, but Mr Obama faces a far harsher economic environment. Unless the economy starts to recover powerfully enough to cut America’s high unemployment levels, this modest set of policies will seem footling. Such tiny giveaways are unlikely to help assuage Americans’ growing sense that this is an administration that has expended more effort on advancing long-held liberal dreams, like universal health care, than on securing middle-class jobs, nor to allay their suspicion that bail-outs are only for bankers. There is a deep populist anger brewing in America, and Mr Obama risks having cooled it barely at all.

关于经济问题，奥巴马对儿童保育，学生贷款等家庭导向型税收优惠的细小调整让中产阶级有些动心。这种微观解决方式在克林顿陷入困境时起过作用，但是奥巴马面对的是更加艰难的经济环境。除非经济强劲反弹的力度大到能将美国的高失业率降下来，不然这种动作不大的政策将作用有限。美国人越来越担忧，这届政府更关心的是实现自由主义者的夙愿，比如全民医保，而不是为中产阶级的工作提供保障，所以这样的小恩小惠很难减轻这种担忧，也很难消减民众对于经济救援只有银行家收益的怀疑。在美国，民众的怒火在酝酿、焚烧，而奥巴马很有可能根本熄灭不了。

The same is true for his efforts at fiscal rectitude. The Obama team has read the runes of Massachusetts, and has observed that one of the things that most angered voters there was the size of the deficit. Rightly so: the Congressional Budget Office gave warning this week that the deficit would run at more than $1.3 trillion this year, as a proportion of GDP the second-worst since the war (the worst was last year), with a long line of horrors to come. But the president’s response was another exercise in having it both ways. His promise to freeze non-security discretionary spending for three years was meant to reassure people who worry about a poisonous legacy of debt. But once military spending and entitlements (such as government-provided health insurance for the poor and the elderly, and Social Security) are stripped out, less than a fifth of the budget is left to freeze: and that freeze would be counteracted by the jobs bill that Mr Obama urged Congress to pass.

财政方面所遇的情况也差不多。奥巴马的团队已经看过麻省的材料，并已经觉察到赤字规模是最让民众愤怒的事情之一。民众有着资格：本周国会预算办公室警告，今年的赤字将超过1.3万亿美元。如果换算成占GDP的比重，这会是战后第二糟糕的（去年最糟糕），并且麻烦还将接踵而至。但是总统的回应又是模棱两可。他承诺将把不稳定可自由支配开支冻结3年，这只是为了让人们别担心危险的积累负债。但是在除去开军费开支和政府津贴（比如政府负担的给穷人和老人的医疗保险，还有社会保障）后，可以被冻结的预算还不到五分之一：而剩下的这一部分要将被奥巴马敦促国会通过的就业法案抵消。

America cannot return to budgetary health without tackling entitlements. Mr Obama said he wants a bipartisan commission to figure out how to get the deficit down. The Senate voted down just such a plan the day before his big speech. Mr Obama therefore intends to set up one of his own. But the chances of Congress accepting (or perhaps even debating) the commission’s recommendations hardly seem encouraging in light of the rejection. A better speech would have laid out an outline for a return to fiscal health, not subcontracted it.

不解决政府津贴问题，美国的预算就不可能走上健康的轨道。奥巴马说他需要一个两党联立的委员会来研究削减赤字的路径。在他发表演讲的前一天，参议院就否决了这一计划。于是奥巴马想自己成立一个。但是鉴于这一否决，国会通过（或者说商讨）该委员会意见的几率不令人鼓舞。一个更好的演讲应该是为财政健康的恢复提出基本思路，而不是将它转交给别人。

Other questions remain unanswered. Is Mr Obama ready to fight hard for the things he said he believed in when he ran for office—health-care reform, a cap-and-trade system to rein in America’s carbon-dioxide emissions, the rebuilding of America’s schools? Will he act on his promise to impose sanctions on Iran? The answer to all those questions, he said, is yes. But he gave not the slightest clue how he intends to accomplish any of it. He could, for instance, have urged the House to pass the Senate health bill, which is imperfect but better than nothing; or he could have reached out to Republicans by offering compromises. He did neither, and that was a waste of a podium.

还有其他问题没有得到回答。竞选时奥巴马提到的那些信仰，比如医改，控制美国碳排量的限额交易机制，美国学校的重建，他会为此全力以赴吗？他会实践自己关于制裁伊朗的诺言吗？对于所有这些问题，他说，肯定。但是打算如何实现它们，他却没有给出任何思路。他可以，比方说，促使众议院通过参议院的医保议案，即使它有遗憾之处，但也比没有强。或者， 他可以和共和党交换些条件。但是，他都没做。这就有点浪费演讲台的作用了。

Education

教育

Reaching the poorest

给予赤贫者受教育的机会

Enrolling the world’s poorest children in school needs new thinking, not just more money from taxpayers

要让世界上最贫困的儿童能接受教育，光靠纳税人缴纳更多的税金是不够的，还要在思维上有所创新。

Jan 21st 2010
From The Economist print edition

DAWN has just broken but classes have already started at the village school in Aqualaar, in the Garissa district of Kenya’s arid north-east. Around 30 children, mostly from families of Somali herders, sit listening as an enthusiastic 18-year-old teacher, Ibrahim Hussein, gives an arithmetic lesson. The school is really little more than a sandy patch of ground under an acacia tree. Mr Hussein’s blackboard hangs from its branches. There are no desks or chairs. Pupils follow the lesson by using sticks to scratch numbers in the sand.

尽管天刚破晓，阿奎拉乡村学校就已经开始授课了（阿奎拉位于肯尼亚东北部气候干燥的加里萨区）。听课的孩子有30个左右，大多是索马里牧人的儿女。孩子们坐着聆听着他们18岁的老师易卜拉欣•侯赛因热情洋溢地上算术课。说是学校，其实不过是金合欢树下的一块沙地。侯赛因老师的黑板就挂在树上。那里既没有桌子也没有椅子，小学生们用木棍在沙地上演算，以此跟上进度。

The lack of basic kit is only too typical of schools in poor countries. What is unusual, sadly, is that Mr Hussein was actually present and teaching when his school was visited by Kevin Watkins, the lead author of “Reaching the Marginalised”, a new report on education in the developing world by UNESCO.

缺乏基本的授课设施，是贫困国家学校的一大特点。非同寻常的是，当凯文•沃特金斯（凯文•沃特金斯是联合国教科文组织关于发展中国家教育的新报告《伸手帮助被边缘化的群体》的首席作者。）来参观学校的时候，侯赛因老师居然在学校授课。老师在授课成了非同寻常的事，多少让人心酸。

In India, for example, research by the World Bank reveals that 25% of teachers in government-run schools are away on any given day; of those present, only half were actually teaching when the bank’s researchers made spot checks. That is dreadful but not unusual: teacher absenteeism rates are around 20% in rural Kenya, 27% in Uganda and 14% in Ecuador.
继续阅读“Reaching the poorest 给予赤贫者受教育的机会”

Tony Blair and Britain’s Iraq inquiry

托尼•布莱尔和英国之对伊战争调查

Weapons inspection

武器核查

Jan 14th 2010
From The Economist print edition

The right questions to ask the former prime minister

正确提问前首相

THERE have already been so many inquiries into the Iraq war (including one in the Netherlands that this week judged the invasion to have been illegal), and it was all so long ago, that many people thought the latest British probe, under Sir John Chilcot, would prove pointless. In fact it has already been informative, not least because some of the soldiers, spooks and diplomats who have given evidence have grown franker since retirement. On January 12th Sir John’s panel questioned Alastair Campbell, formerly the government’s main spin doctor. His testimony was a telling rehearsal for the imminent appearance of the star witness: his old boss, Tony Blair.

算上本周在荷兰将对伊战争归结为“非法入侵”的调查，对伊战争调查已进行过很多次了。很久以前，还有许多人认为这场由约翰•柴考特爵士坐镇的英国的对伊战争调查最终会是一场空。但事实上，调查已经取得了大量丰富的信息。这主要是因为一些提供证词的士兵、情报人员和外交官在退休后更为坦白。1月12日，约翰爵士的调查委员会对政府的前高级幕僚阿拉斯代尔•坎贝尔进行了质询。坎贝尔的证词也为即将接受质询的主要证人——他的前领导托尼•布莱尔，做了个铺垫。

Despite his nominal job description, Mr Campbell helped to construct and purvey the controversial case for war. “Nobody was really saying that Saddam Hussein did not have weapons of mass destruction [WMD],” he observed this week. That is true. Saddam’s record of making and using such weapons, the hunches of UN inspectors and the fact that the dictator continued to frustrate them and act guilty until the very end all made it seem that he still retained some WMD.

虽然并非职责所在，坎贝尔仍参与促成了倍受争议的对伊战争。他本周说：“没有人说过萨达姆•侯赛因没有大规模杀伤性武器。”诚然，萨达姆有制造和使用此类武器的“记录”，联合国调查人员的直觉，以及这位独裁者直到最后都不与配合并犯下种种的恶行，这一切都让人以为他仍然拥有大规模杀伤性武器。。

But there are weapons and there are weapons. The nuclear kind is by far the most terrifying; and the evidence presented by Britain and America that Saddam was actively and rapidly pursuing a nuke has come to seem especially dodgy. When they question Mr Blair about WMD, Sir John and his colleagues should concentrate on nuclear weapons—and in particular on the government’s assertion that Saddam might develop one “in between one and two years”. These nuclear allegations, which helped Mr Blair call the threat from Iraq “serious and current”, need further probing.

但是有军队的地方就会有武器。核武器显然是最为可怕的武器，因此英美提供的 “萨达姆正积极迅速地获取核武器”的证据就显得尤其危险（原诡诈）。在调查委员会就大规模杀伤性武器质询布莱尔时，约翰爵士和他的同僚们应该着重于“核武器”——特别是政府对萨达姆有可能在“一至两年内”制造出核武器的断言。这些有关核武器的断言（布莱尔曾凭此称伊拉克威胁是“严重而紧迫的”）值得深入调查。

A second focus should be on how raw intelligence was changed. Mr Blair described as “extensive, detailed and authoritative” intelligence that was, in fact, patchy and old; he described conclusions that were speculative as “beyond doubt”. At the inquiry, Mr Campbell drew a distinction between shifting lines and paragraphs in dossiers and actually fabricating intelligence. Again, fair enough; and it would be futile for the inquiry to try to prove outright lying in Mr Blair’s statements about WMD. Their focus should be subtler: on his government’s negligent approach to the sources of its claims, its failure to confess uncertainty and its urge to overstate.

第二个应着重关注的是：原始情报是如何被篡改的。布莱尔曾将那些拼凑而成的旧情报称之为“多方面、详细且权威的”，并将疑点重重的论断描述为“毋庸置疑的”。在质询中，坎贝尔曾指出移动档案中的文字及段落与伪造情报是不同的。那么，好吧，要立即通过布莱尔在质询中关于大规模杀伤性武器的陈词来证明情报是伪造的只能是徒劳。委员会应关注更为微妙的事件：布莱尔政府对形成其论断的资料采取的草率行径，否认不确定性并且急于夸大事实。

Beyond doubt

毋庸置疑？

There is also a string of outstanding questions about the conduct and aftermath of the war. For instance, why did some British troops seem not to have been fully equipped for the task? Indeed, why did the Treasury, overseen by the man who was then chancellor of the exchequer, Gordon Brown, fail to put its money where Mr Blair’s mouth was? (Mr Brown himself has dubiously been excused from testifying until after Britain’s pending general election.) Another concern is the increasingly vexed issue of when, precisely, Mr Blair committed British forces to the invasion—and whether he simultaneously said different things to George Bush and the British public. And why did he enter the war without much assurance that the Americans had a plan for post-war reconstruction?

对于这场战争的行为及后果还有许多悬疑，比如：为什么一些参战的英国部队似乎没有齐全的装备？确实，在戈登•布朗就任财政部财政大臣期间，为什么不以实际行动力挺布莱尔？（对布朗的质询被推迟在即将进行的英国大选之后也令人生疑。）另一个引起持续争议的问题是：布莱尔究竟是什么时候决定派英国部队入侵伊拉克的，面对乔治•布什和英国公众他是否有两套截然不同的说法？为什么他还没确定美国是否有战后重建方案，就贸然参与对伊战争？

These worries have not arisen because of a petty dispute between Mr Blair and his critics in the media—as Mr Campbell seemed to argue at the inquiry this week. They are important because Saddam turned out not to have any WMD, and because the post-war occupation of Iraq has been disastrous (and for Britain, militarily humiliating). And they are not merely historical curiosities. The unravelling of the case for war, and the calamities of its aftermath, have discredited politicians in the eyes of many Britons, and may inhibit the country’s future foreign policy, not to mention the cost in blood and treasure. Mr Blair’s turn at the inquiry may be the last, best chance to explain those mistakes and allay some of the anger they provoked—if he is asked the right questions.

本周，坎贝尔在质询中申辩：未有这方面的担忧是缘于布莱尔与其批评家在媒体的一次小争论。但这些问题却至关重要，因为萨达姆被证实并没有任何大规模杀伤性武器，而对伊的战后占领却损失惨重——英国在军事上为此蒙羞。这些问题不只是历史的噱头，对伊战争的揭晓以及战后的灾难，使许多英国人都认为政治家是不可信的，这很可能会羁绊英国以后的外交政策，且不说战争引起的死伤及国库损耗了。要平息他们所挑起的公愤，对布莱尔的质询也许就是最后的，也是最好的机会了——如果问到了点子上的话。

译者：mabel.jie

The psychology of power
权力心理学

Absolutely
绝对如此
Jan 21st 2010
From The Economist print edition

Power corrupts, but it corrupts only those who think they deserve it
权力腐蚀人，但它腐蚀的仅仅是那些认为权力是自己应得之物的人

REPORTS of politicians who have extramarital affairs while complaining about the death of family values, or who use public funding for private gain despite condemning government waste, have become so common in recent years that they hardly seem surprising anymore. Anecdotally, at least, the connection between power and hypocrisy looks obvious.
在政府官员中，有人一边热衷婚外情一边哀叹家庭价值观的沦丧；有人尽管一边嘴上谴责政府浪费资金，却一边私下利用公众经费为己图利。近些年来，这一类新闻已经司空见惯，不足为奇了。至少，从趣闻轶事的角度来看，权力和伪善之间的关系十分明显。

Anecdote is not science, though. And, more subtly, even if anecdote is correct, it does not answer the question of whether power tends to corrupt, as Lord Acton’s dictum has it, or whether it merely attracts the corruptible. To investigate this question Joris Lammers at Tilburg University, in the Netherlands, and Adam Galinsky at Northwestern University, in Illinois, have conducted a series of experiments which attempted to elicit states of powerfulness and powerlessness in the minds of volunteers. Having done so, as they report in Psychological Science, they tested those volunteers’ moral pliability. Lord Acton, they found, was right.
但趣闻轶事毕竟不是科学。而且，就算趣闻轶事属实，它也并没有更深入细致地回答下列问题：究竟是权力——如阿克顿爵士的名言所说【1】——容易腐败所有人，还是权力只不过吸引了原本就腐败的人? 为此，荷兰蒂尔堡大学的里斯•拉默斯（Joris Lammers）博士和美国伊利诺斯州西北大学的亚当•林斯基（Adam Galinsky）博士做了一系列的实验，尝试从实验志愿者的心理中诱导出“有权有势和无权无势”的心理状态。做完诱导后，再测试参与者的道德柔韧性。他们将结果发表在《心理学科学》期刊上并在报告中证实: 阿克顿爵士说对了。

In their first study, Dr Lammers and Dr Galinsky asked 61 university students to write about a moment in their past when they were in a position of high or low power. Previous research has established that this is an effective way to “prime” people into feeling as if they are currently in such a position. Each group (high power and low power) was then split into two further groups. Half were asked to rate, on a nine-point morality scale (with one being highly immoral and nine being highly moral), how objectionable it would be for other people to over-report travel expenses at work. The other half were asked to participate in a game of dice.
在第一轮研究中，拉默斯和林斯基博士要求61名大学生写下他们经历中曾拥有高或低权力职位的一段时间。早期的实验已经证实，这样可以有效地让志愿者感到自己目前正处在这个职位【注：称为诱导过程“prime”process】 。志愿者分为（高、低权位）两组后再每组一分为二。其中一半人将自己对别人在工作中虚报出差费用的反感程度，在标有1-9选项的道德测量表上以打分表示（1表示道德标准最低点，9为最高）。另一半人参与一种掷骰子游戏。

The dice players were told to roll two ten-sided dice (one for “tens” and one for “units”) in the privacy of an isolated cubicle, and report the results to a lab assistant. The number they rolled, which would be a value between one and 100 (two zeros), would determine the number of tickets that they would be given in a small lottery that was run at the end of the study.
骰子游戏者每人在一个隔开的斗间里投掷两个10面骰子（其中一个表示十位数，另一个表示个位数），然后向实验助理报告结果。他们掷骰所报告的点数（1 到100）用来决定各自领取的彩票张数。当实验结束时，这些彩票用来参与一个小型抽奖活动。

In the case of the travel expenses—when the question hung on the behaviour of others—participants in the high-power group reckoned, on average, that over-reporting rated as a 5.8 on the nine-point scale. Low-power participants rated it 7.2. The powerful, in other words, claimed to favour the moral course. In the dice game, however, high-power participants reported, on average, that they had rolled 70 while low-power individuals reported an average 59. Though the low-power people were probably cheating a bit (the expected average score would be 50), the high-power volunteers were undoubtedly cheating—perhaps taking the term “high roller” rather too literally.
在出差报销的测验中（当问题涉及他人的行为时），高权组员在9分之内，对多报出差费用的行为给了平均5.8分。低权位组给了7.2分。换句话说，有权者更赞成高道德要求。在骰子游戏中，高权组员报出的平均数为70，而低权组员的平均数为59。 虽然低权组员也可能编了点小谎（预计的平均值应该是50），但高权组显然明显地谎报了数字—大概他们把“狂赌徒”的字面层意过度当真了【2】。

Taken together, these results do indeed suggest that power tends to corrupt and to promote a hypocritical tendency to hold other people to a higher standard than oneself. To test the point further, though, Dr Lammers and Dr Galinsky explicitly contrasted attitudes to self and other people when the morally questionable activity was the same in each case. Having once again primed two groups of participants to be either high-power or low-power, they then asked some members of each group how acceptable it would be for someone else to break the speed limit when late for an appointment and how acceptable it would be for the participant himself to do so. Others were asked similar questions about tax declarations.
上述综合结果确实显示出权力容易使人腐败，并且促成一种伪善趋向，即对别人持有高过对己的要求标准。 为了更进一步测试这点，拉默斯和林斯基博士通过一个无论“对人和对己”同样都存在道德问题的活动，来清楚地比较组员的态度。将高、低权两组成员再次引导进入状态后，他们对每组中的部分成员提出一些问题：对他人因为赶去面谈而超速违规所能接受的程度？换成自己又怎样? 另一部分成员针对缴税事项回答相类似的问题。

Only the little people pay taxes…【3】
只有小人物在缴税

In both cases participants used the same one-to-nine scale employed in the first experiment. The results showed that the powerful do, indeed, behave hypocritically. They felt that others speeding because they were late warranted a 6.3 on the scale whereas speeding themselves warranted a 7.6. Low-power individuals, by contrast, saw everyone as equal. They scored themselves as 7.2 and others at 7.3—a statistically insignificant difference. In the case of tax dodging, the results were even more striking. High-power individuals felt that when others broke tax laws this rated as a 6.6 on the morality scale, but that if they did so themselves this rated as a 7.6. In this case low-power individuals were actually easier on others and harsher on themselves, with values of 7.7 and 6.8 respectively.
两个活动的参与者使用同样的测试表，即第一次实验中的1-9分测量表。测试结果显示，高权力者的确行为伪善。别人因迟到而超速，他们认为理应给6.3分，而自己超速的话则理应给7.6分。相比之下，低权者却认为各人都该平等对待。他们给自己7.2分，给他人7.3分—这种差距在统计中可忽略不计。针对逃漏税的问题，测试结果甚至更为突显。高权力者认为他人破坏了法律，在道德测量表上打了6.6分，而倘若是自己所为的话，则给7.6分。回答同一问题的低权位者反而对他人宽容，对自己更严格，分别给了7.7和6.8分。

These results, then, suggest that the powerful do indeed behave hypocritically, condemning the transgressions of others more than they condemn their own. Which comes as no great surprise, although it is always nice to have everyday observation confirmed by systematic analysis. But another everyday observation is that powerful people who have been caught out often show little sign of contrition. It is not just that they abuse the system; they also seem to feel entitled to abuse it. To investigate this point, Dr Lammers and Dr Galinsky devised a third set of experiments. These were designed to disentangle the concept of power from that of entitlement. To do this, the researchers changed the way they primed people.
这些结果反映了高权者确实具伪善行为，与对待自己的违法相比，他人的违法行为将更多地受到这些人的谴责。其实这并不会令人特别惊奇，不过这种日常所见经过科学分析后得到证实总归是好事。还有一种司空见惯的现象，即有权人物犯规被逮之后鲜有忏悔之意。他们不仅滥用职权，并且认为自己有权利这么做。为了研究这一点，拉默斯和林斯基博士设计了第三套实验。这次实验的目标是把权力概念从权利概念中分开来。研究人员因此改换了他们引导试验者的方法。

A culture of entitlement
权利文化

Half of 105 participants were asked to write about a past experience in which they had legitimately been given a role of high or low power. The others were asked to write about an experience of high or low power where they did not feel their power (or lack of it) was legitimate. All of the volunteers were then asked to rate how immoral it would be for someone to take an abandoned bicycle rather than report the bicycle to the police. They were also asked, if they were in real need of a bicycle, how likely they would be to take it themselves and not report it.
105名参与者中有一半被要求写下一段“合理地”处于高或低权位的过往经历。另一半被要求写一段拥有高、低权力职位的经历，但他们感到自己的有权（或无权）是不合理的。其后，所有的志愿者都要给下列问题打分：有人将一辆拾到的自行车归为己有而没有交予警察，其行为不符合道德标准的程度是多少？他们还要回答：假如你此时正急需一辆自行车，你留下车子而不交出去的可能性有多大？

The “powerful” who had been primed to believe they were entitled to their power readily engaged in acts of moral hypocrisy. They assigned a value of 5.1 to others engaging in the theft of the bicycle while rating the action at 6.9 if they were to do it themselves. Among participants in all of the low-power states, morally hypocritical behaviour inverted itself, as it had in the case of tax fraud. “Legitimate” low-power individuals assigned others a score of 5.1 if they stole a bicycle and gave themselves a 4.3. Those primed to feel that their lack of power was illegitimate behaved similarly, assigning values of 4.7 and 4.4 respectively.
那些已进入角色，认为有权利享用自己权力的“当权者”毫不迟疑地干起道德伪善的行径。他们给他人偷车行为5.1分，却替自己的同样行为打6.9分。而在所有的低权位者之中，道德伪善行为恰恰反了过来，就同偷税问题一样。“合理”的低权势者给他人行为打5.1点，却为自己留车不还的行为打了4.3分。那些感到自己被“不合理”地剥夺了权力的人具有类似的举动，分别给了4.7和4.4分。

However, an intriguing characteristic emerged among participants in high-power states who felt they did not deserve their elevated positions. These people showed a similar tendency to that found in low-power individuals—to be harsh on themselves and less harsh on others—but the effect was considerably more dramatic. They felt that others warranted a lenient 6.0 on the morality scale when stealing a bike but assigned a highly immoral 3.9 if they took it themselves. Dr Lammers and Dr Galinsky call this reversal “hypercrisy”.
然而值得注意的是，在拥有高权位、但认为自己并没有资格处于高位的参与者身上显出一种耐人寻味的特征。他们比较倾向于严己宽人，与低权力者相类似，但差异却更为明显。他们认为他人将自行车归己所有的道德表现应得到一个宽恕性地6.0分，却对自己同样行为给了相当低的3.9道德分。拉默斯和林斯基博士称之为反向“伪善”。

They argue, therefore, that people with power that they think is justified break rules not only because they can get away with it, but also because they feel at some intuitive level that they are entitled to take what they want. This sense of entitlement is crucial to understanding why people misbehave in high office. In its absence, abuses will be less likely. The word “privilege” translates as “private law”. If Dr Lammers and Dr Galinsky are right, the sense which some powerful people seem to have that different rules apply to them is not just a convenient smoke screen. They genuinely believe it.
他们分析说，由此可见，拥有自己认为是合法权力的人们违规犯法，不但是因为他们可以违法而不受惩罚，而且也是因为他们在某种直觉层次上感到自己本来就有权利夺取所需。这种权利意识对了解人们为什么在高位上会胡作非为具有关键意义。这种意识不存在时，权力滥用就不太容易发生。特权这个词儿，应解读为私法。如果拉默斯和林斯基博士没错的话，有权势者似乎具有将自己置身于不同法律之中的意识，而这种意识，不仅仅是一个方便的遁词，他们倒是真心相信的。

What explains hypercrisy is less obvious. It is known, though, from experiments on other species that if those at the bottom of a dominance hierarchy show signs of getting uppity, those at the top react both quickly and aggressively. Hypercrisy might thus be a signal of submissiveness—one that is exaggerated in creatures that feel themselves to be in the wrong place in the hierarchy. By applying reverse privileges to themselves, they hope to escape punishment from the real dominants. Perhaps the lesson, then, is that corruption and hypocrisy are the price that societies pay for being led by alpha males (and, in some cases, alpha females). The alternative, though cleaner, is leadership by wimps.
这样一来，“伪善”的解释就不再那么明显了。从其他生物的实验得知，如果处在强权统治等级底层变得自大而不安分时，顶层强势者就会立即出面压制。“伪善”因此可能变成一种“恭顺服从”的信号——这个信号在那些自己认为在等级制度中占了错误位置的生物身上得到强化。通过赋予自己“反向特权”【注：放弃权力权利的信号】，希望逃脱真正强势头领对他们的惩罚。或许，此中可学到的教益就是，社会群体要求得到强人（阿尔法雄性，某些别的状况下则为阿尔法雌性）的领导， 就要付出腐败和伪善的代价。舍此， 另一个选择， 政治上虽然比较干净， 但是由弱主主政。

【注释】

【1】Lord Acton’s dictum：Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely.
阿克顿爵士的名言：
原文：所有权力都易腐化，绝对的权力则绝对地会腐化。
阿克顿勋爵 是 英国十九世纪著名的自由主义政论家，作品《自由和权力浅说》
约翰•埃默里克•爱德华•达尔伯格•阿克顿(John Emerieh Edward Dalberg Acton)，1834年1月10日生于那不勒斯，费迪南德•理查德•爱德华•达尔伯格•阿克顿和玛丽•德•达尔伯格(即后来的格兰维尔伯爵夫人)之子。

【2】high roller 一掷千金的赌徒: someone who spends a lot of money carelessly or risks a lot of money on games, races etc.

【3】语出Leona Helmsley

利昂娜•赫尔姆斯利（1920年7月4日–2007年8月20日）曾是个亿万富翁。因逃税于1992年8月入狱16月。她的佣人在法庭上指证她曾经说过这样的话：
“我们不缴税，只有小人物才缴税”（”We don’t pay taxes. Only the little people pay taxes.”）。
（http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leona_Helmsley）

【4】阿尔法雄性 alpha male：
In social animals, the alpha is the individual in the community with the highest rank (MDL found in social groups). Where one male and one female fulfill this role, they are referred to as the alpha pair (the term varies when several females fulfill this role – it is extremely rare among mammals for several males to fulfill this role with one female). Other animals in the same social group may exhibit deference or other symbolic signs of respect particular to their species towards the alpha.

The alpha animals are given preference to be the first to eat and the first to mate, among some species the only animals in the pack allowed to mate. Other animals in the community are usually killed or ousted if they violate this rule. (wiki)

译者：skittos