The Economist 经济学人 经济学家 中文版

The war on baby girls
对女婴发动的战争

Gendercide
性别灭绝

至少1亿个女孩由于杀婴、选择性堕胎及缺乏照料等已经消失，而且这一数字还在上升

假设你生活在一个快速发展的贫困国家，是期待着第一个孩子降生的夫妻中的一员。假设你是新兴中产阶级的一分子，你的收入在增加，而你不希望要太多的孩子，但传统的观念对你还有着无时不刻的影响，而最重要的影响则体现在重男轻女的思想上。也许一些家庭仍然需要重体力劳动来维持生计。也许只有儿子可以继承土地。也许女儿注定要嫁入另一个家庭，而你希望年老时有人在身边照料。也许嫁女儿需要陪送嫁妆。

现在，假设你做了一个超声波扫描，费用是12美元，但你承担的起这笔花费。扫描表示，怀的是一个女孩。你自己希望有一个男孩，而你家里的其他人更是极力坚持要个男孩。尽管村庄里有的人家杀死女婴，而你或许从未想过这么做。但堕胎似乎有所不同。你会怎么做呢？

对于数以百万计的夫妇而言，其答案是：将女婴流产，再去怀一个儿子。在中国和印度北部，每出生100个女孩，则出生120多个男孩。自然法则决定了出生的男性比女性略多一点，以修正男孩更容易感染婴儿疾病的偏差。但自然的修正不会有如此之大。

对于反对堕胎者而言，这是一场大屠杀。这家报纸的观点代表了一部分人的看法，它认为堕胎的应该本着“安全、合法和少量”的原则进行（引用比尔克林顿的原话），要视情况而定。但这种个体行为的社会累积后果是灾难性的。中国人称未婚的男性青年为“光棍”，光是中国攒下的“光棍”数量就相当于美国全部年轻男性的人口数量。在任何一个国家无所寄托的年轻男性必然带来麻烦。在亚洲国家，婚姻和子女是得到社会认可的必要条件，单身男性几乎像不法分子。男女比例失衡的这一代现在已经进入成人行列，犯罪率、贩卖新娘和性暴力，甚至女性自杀率都在上升并不断加剧。

把人为导致女性减少的行为称之为性别灭绝一点也不夸张。由于坠胎、杀婴和缺乏照料而导致死亡，妇女人口在以数百万计的消失。1990年，印度经济学家阿马蒂亚森认为消失的妇女数量高达1亿人，而现在这一数字只会更高。略感安慰的是，一些国家如韩国，已经在采取行动以避免极端情况的出现，结果表明，这些国家采取的行动可以减少伤害。其它的国家如果想要停止这种大屠杀就应该向韩国学习其他需要从中吸取教训，如果他们停止屠杀。

The dearth and death of little sisters
小姐妹们都上哪里去了？

大多数人都知道中国和印度北部的男孩比例之高完全违背自然规律。但很少有人知道问题有多么严重，而且其严重性正在加剧。在中国，上世纪80年代后期出生的这一代性别比例是108个男孩比100个女孩，本世纪初出生的一代性别比是124比100。在中国的一些省份，其比例史无前例的达到了130比100。虽然中国的情况最严重，但人口性别失衡的现象已经蔓延世界各地。东亚其他国家，包括台湾和新加坡，西巴尔干和高加索地区的前共产国家，甚至美国的部分族群（例如例如华裔和日裔美国人）都存在扭曲的性别比例。几乎每一个大陆都存在性别灭绝现象。无论是富人还是穷人，是受过良好教育者还是目不识丁的文盲，是信奉印度教还是伊斯兰教、儒教或基督教的人，他们都受到性别失衡现象的困扰。

财富并不能扭转这种失衡。台湾和新加坡都是一种开放而富裕的经济体。中国和印度出现最严重的性别失衡的地方恰好就是最富裕，文化程度最高的地区。如此之多的并未执行独生子女政策的国家依然存在性别失衡现象，因此中国的只生一个孩子政策只是造成性别失衡的部分原因。

事实上，消灭女婴是三股力量共同作用的结果：自古以来就有的对男孩的偏爱，现代人对小家庭生活的追求，以及超音波检查和其它能够确定胎儿性别的技术。在一个家家基本上都有四至六个孩子的社会，一个家庭几乎肯定会有一个男孩;想要儿子不必以牺牲女儿为代价。但现在一对夫妇只想要两个孩子，或比如在中国，仅允许生一个，他们为了要儿子会牺牲尚未出生的女儿。这就是中国和印度开放和现代化程度最高的地区反而性别比失衡最严重的原因。这也是为什么第二个孩子的性别失衡更严重的原因：父母可以接受第一胎是个女儿，但会尽一切努力确保第二胎（可能就是最后一胎）是个男孩。在一些地方第三个孩子的男女性别比超过了200：1。

How to stop half the sky crashing down
如何撑住这半边天？

女婴因此成了自古流传而来的偏见与现代人喜好小家庭的观念不当的结合后的牺牲品。只有一个国家已设法改变了这种格局。在上世纪90年代韩国的性别失衡情况几乎与中国相同。而现在韩国的性别比例正渐归正常。这一局面并非有意而为之，而是得益于文化的改变。由于大力发展女性教育，制定了完善的男女权利平等法规和大量针对性别歧视诉讼的裁决判例使重男轻女的观念显得落伍和完全没有必要。现代化的力量先是加剧了偏见，然后战胜了偏见。

但是，韩国是在富裕后才取得这一局面的。中国与印度的平均收入分别是韩国的四分之一和十分之一，如果他们要等到与现在的韩国同样富裕，那要经过许多代人。为了加快改变，他们需要采取行动，不管怎么说这对他们是有益的。首先中国应取消只生一个孩子的政策。该国的领导人由于担心人口增长将不会取消这一政策，他们对西方在中国人权问题上的关注也不屑一顾。但降低生育率不再需要只生一个孩子的政策来实现了。东亚其他国家也曾面临同中国一样的人口压力，但现在压力已经大大减轻。而这一政策加剧了中国性别比例严重失衡的现象，将产生灾难性的后果。胡锦涛主席说，创造“和谐社会”是其政策的指导原则，而在这样一个深深扭曲了家庭生活的政策下不可能实现“和谐社会”的目标。

所有的国家都需要重视女孩的价值。它们应鼓励女性接受教育;废除妨碍女儿继承财产的法律和习俗；杀一儆百，严惩那些造成了严重性别失衡的医院和诊所；让妇女参与公共生活，从电视主播到交通警察都雇用女性。毛泽东说过：“妇女能顶半边天。”全世界都需要更多地行动起来，以防止性别灭绝使这根挚天之柱轰然倒塌。

译者：dqzxf
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Obituary
讣告

Michael Foot
迈克尔•富特

Michael Foot, politician and man of letters, died on March 3rd, aged 96

     政治家、作家迈克尔•富特于本月3日仙逝，享年96岁

Mar 4th 2010 | From The Economist print edition

HE DIED a much-loved Englishman, renowed for his untidy shock of white hair, his shambling wanderings on Hampstead Heath with his dog Dizzy, his devotion to literature, and the modesty that allowed him, when leader of the Labour Party, to stand in his anorak waiting at the bus stop. Deep into old age, half-blind, he never failed to keep up with the latest works on his great loves, Shelley and Byron, and to hold forth over breakfast—several eggs running all over his plate—about the latest troubles of his beloved party, and its prospects for the future.
   
     他，名叫迈克尔•富特（Michael Foot），一位备受爱戴的英吉利人——带着他引人注目的一头蓬乱的白发、带着他在普斯泰德西斯公园牵着小狗迪齐蹒跚闲行的身影、带着他对文学的挚爱、还带着他任工党党魁时，身着风帽夹克在站台候车所赢得的谦逊美名——离开了人间。进入高龄后，他几近失明，雪莱和拜伦的作品，乃其至爱，一俟新评问世，他必关注；而且，在早餐（那早餐是几枚在餐盘中来回滚动的鸡蛋）时侃侃而谈，谈论他所爱戴的工党的困境和未来。

He was not always so popular. As a left-wing journalist working for the right-wing proprietor Max Beaverbrook before, during and after the war, the vituperative scorn of his prose injured those who did not realise that it masked a complete lack of personal malice. But age and familiarity smoothed the sharp edges. “Sweet man, Michael,” remarked Anthony Crosland, a revisionist socialist who, in the 1970s, had spent most of his time fighting him.

     迈克尔•富特并不总是备受爱戴。在二战前、中、后的一段时间，他作为一名左翼记者在右翼领袖东马克斯•弗布鲁克旗下工作，他那充满责骂鄙视的文章伤害了一些人的自尊——这些人实际上没有意识到他的文章完全不带有对个人的蓄意伤害。但时间和世故人情消融了他的锐气。“好人，迈克尔”，安东尼•克罗斯兰如是说——20世纪70年代，修正社会主义者安东尼•克罗斯兰在与迈克尔•富特的论战中度过了大部分时光。

The leadership of the Labour Party was not a job which—for most of his life—he sought. When Jim Callaghan stood down as leader in 1980, the two men most likely to succeed him were Denis Healey on the right and Peter Shore on the left. But Mr Foot, by then 67, had developed a certain fond vanity which was worked on by a Machiavellian trade-union leader, Clive Jenkins, to persuade him to stand. The result was the worst disaster that could have befallen Mr Foot. He won.   

     出任工党党魁不是富特一生中大部分时间里所寻求的事业。1981年，吉姆•卡拉汉作为[工党]党魁下台时，最有可能接替他的两个人是[党内]右翼派系的丹尼斯•希利和左翼派系的彼得•肖尔。 那时的富特已经67岁，心里开始滋生出几分骄傲自满，一位狡猾的工会领袖正是利用这一点，劝说他挺身参选，而最终的结果则是他最不愿意看到的—-他赢了。

The Labour Party then was a veritable Bermuda triangle, containing both ardent followers of the left-wing policies advocated by Tony Benn, and a right-wing group, led by Roy Jenkins, which was threatening to start a new centre party. Mr Foot’s appeal was that, being of the left but not of the far left, he could hold this combustible mixture together.

     是时，工党[内]是一个名副其实的百慕大三角架构，其中既有托尼•本主张的左翼政策的追随者，也有罗伊•詹金斯领导的右翼团体，后者威胁要创建一个新政党。富特的左，但又左得不太远的主张，可以将这两种易燃物揉合在一起。

To a degree, he did. The breakaway was contained. Mr Foot accepted most of the policies of the left, including unilateral nuclear disarmament which he had always agreed with, and many others that he hadn’t. This was just enough to preserve his party broadly intact. Unfortunately, it also made it unelectable. In the 1983 general election, fought on a manifesto described by one shadow minister as “the longest suicide note in history”, the party started badly and finished worse.

     在一定程度上，富特做到了这一点。党内分裂得到控制。富特接受了左派的大部分政策，包括他一直主张的单方面核裁军以及他过去不曾赞同的其他一些政策。他的这些举措仅可大体上保持党内团结。遗憾的是，这些举措未能确保他成功连任。1983年大选期间，由于富特发表了被一位影子大臣形容为“历史上篇幅最长的遗书”的竞选政纲，致使工党开局不顺，结果更糟。

Even before the election, Mr Foot was not an effective leader. He dithered terribly. At one point, he insisted in the Commons that Peter Tatchell, a left-winger, would never be a Labour candidate while he was leader. A little later, he decided that he could be. Most voters could not conceive of him as a plausible prime minister. He seemed to come from another age, perhaps the 19th century, a West Country radical in his family’s best tradition. He could not get the hang of television, and horrified the country by appearing at the Cenotaph one Remembrance Day in a short, scruffy coat. By the time he stepped down gratefully after his defeat, he seemed a tragi-comic figure.

     即使在选举前，富特先生也算不上是一个卓有成效的领导人。他相当地优柔寡断。有一次，当时他还是工党领导人时，他在下院坚持说左翼成员彼得•塔契尔永远不能成为工党的候选人。过了一会儿，他又断定他会是[候选人]。多数选民无法想象他真的成为首相。他似乎来自另一个时代——或许就是来自19世纪吧，他是一位那个世纪英国西南部的、带着所在团队优良传统的激进分子。他不懂如何在电视机上秀形象，而令举国震惊的是，他于荣军纪念日在和平纪念碑出席纪念活动时，身着短裤、衣冠不整。他在竞选落败后，却带着感激引退的行为，令人感觉他是一位悲喜剧式的人物。

Flying with Hazlitt

与黑兹利特[注1]齐飞

His political judgment was dodgy from the beginning. In 1974-75, when he first went into government as employment secretary, he was responsible for relations with the trade unions. In the words of one cabinet member of the time, “The relationship was one of give-and-take. The government gave and they took.” Industrial subsidies, housing subsidies, even food subsidies flowed out in an effort to buy low pay settlements. All were enthusiastically supported by Mr Foot. None made a jot of difference to escalating wage agreements.

     富特的政治辨别力自始就不怎么样。 1974至75年期间，他第一次进入政府内阁，出任劳工部大臣，在处理与工会的关系上，他是应受指责的。用当时一位政府内阁成员的话说：“这种相互妥协的关系变成一边倒。政府给，他们取”。工业补贴、住房补贴、甚至食物补贴大量花掉，以求与工会达成低工资协议。所有这一切都得到了富特先生满腔热忱的支持。但在免于形成高工资协议上毫无效果。

Mr Foot was slow to realise this. But once he had, he entered perhaps the most effective period of his political life. In an extraordinary speech to his party’s conference in 1976, he quoted Joseph Conrad: “Always facing it, Captain MacWhir. That’s the way to get through. Always facing it—that’s the way we’ve got to solve this problem.” By 1978 the economy was back on an even keel and Labour was neck-and-neck in the polls.

     富特意识到这一点是缓慢的。但是，一旦他意识到了，就进入了也许是他政治生涯中最卓有成效的时期。在1976年工党年会上的一次特别演讲中，他引用约瑟夫•康拉德的话：“麦克惠尔船长，总得面对现实，这才是到达目的地的办法。总得面对现实——这才是我们不得不解决此麻烦的办法”。到1978年时，经济又回复平稳，且工党在民调中的支持率也与经济的转好同步上升。

But Mr Foot, by then the leader of the House of Commons, convinced himself that his party would lose an election that October. More important, he convinced the prime minister. The election was postponed to the spring of 1979. The “winter of discontent”, with widespread strikes, intervened.This was the first of two elections which Mr Foot delivered to Margaret Thatcher on a plate.

     不过，时任下议院领袖的富特自我确认，他所在的工党将会在10月的大选中落马。尤其是，他也使首相[即当时由工党出任的首相詹姆斯•卡拉汉—译者注]认识到这一点。因伴之以大罢工的“不满的冬天”事件的影响，10月份的选举被推迟到1979年的春天。这次选举是富特两次轻易将胜选权让渡给撒切尔夫人中的第一次。

He could seem unworldly. As a minister, he once boarded a plane to a Socialist International conference in Europe without a penny in foreign currency, carrying only a leather-bound volume of Hazlitt. Yet in one sense, he was entirely worldly. He had an instinctive understanding of people. He wrote beautifully and, after overcoming a stammer, was a wonderful orator: humorous, self-deprecating, empathetic. He could be a hater—anyone who failed to perceive the genius of his hero Aneurin Bevan, whose biography he wrote, had best look out—but he was incapable of sustained malevolence.

     富特似乎天生不谙世故。作为一位大臣，他曾经在没有一分外币的情况下，仅携带一本黑兹利特的皮面装订书籍，就登上一架飞机，去欧洲出席一个“国际社会主义者”会议。但在某种意义上说，他又老于世故。他对民众悲喜如天才般洞若观火。他文笔优美，而且在克服口吃后成了优秀的演说家，他幽默诙谐、自嘲自谦、善解人意。他本当是一个怀有恨意的人——任何不能感知贝文•安奈林（富特所写传记中的主人公）的才能的人，最易得此判断——但让他持久对某人怀有恨意，他又做不到。

Over the last few years of his life, Mr Foot contemplated writing a serious work of socialist philosophy. Instead, he embarked on a biography of an eccentric literary genius, H.G. Wells. In the end, that seemed to suit him better.

     在富特生命的最后几年，他打算写一部关于社会主义思想体系的严肃著作。相反，他却写起了一部关于一位超乎寻常的文学天才HG威尔斯的传记来。也许，后者于他更适合。

注1：Hazlitt——黑兹利特 (1778-1830)，英国小品作家和文学评论家

译者：微言大义
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New York low life
平凡的纽约人

Bottoms up
杯酒人生

Feb 25th 2010 | From The Economist print edition

Reporting At Wit’s End: Tales from The New Yorker.
By St. Clair McKelway. Bloomsbury; 619 pages; $18 and £10.99.
《谈笑看纽约: 纽约客杂志的人物故事》
作者：圣克莱尔.马克威 布鲁姆斯伯里出版社；619页；18美元/10.99英镑。

WHEN she learned that the bank was about to foreclose on her mortgage, Katherina Schnible, a slightly lame 72-year-old, remained in her third floor apartment in a little frame house in Brooklyn, refusing to open the door to anybody but her son. Then came the day when she heard a heavy footfall on the first landing, heard somebody running frantically up the first flight of stairs, heard a man’s voice shouting something. The footsteps came closer and then, right outside her door, the voice yelled “Fire!” Mrs Schnible opened her door and hobbled into the hall. “Hello, Mrs Schnible,” said the man standing there. “Here’s a summons for you.”

当她得知自己抵押贷款的住房将被银行没收后，凯瑟琳.史妮波（一位72岁、步伐略有些蹒跚的老人）待在她位于布鲁克林一栋构架房第三层的公寓里，无论谁来都拒不开门开，除了她儿子。直到有一天，她听到楼梯口传来沉重的脚步声，听到有人慌慌张张跑上第一层的楼梯，还听到有人在叫喊着些什么。脚步声越来越近，接着，就在她的门口，传来一声“起火啦!”史妮波女士打开房门，踉踉跄跄的跑到大厅。“您好，史妮波女士，”一位站在那儿的男士说道。“这是您的传票。”

The man on the stairs was Harry Grossman, the “champion process-server of all time”, and the story is among countless told to readers of the New Yorker by St. Clair McKelway, a wry observer of the city’s low life, from the 1930s into the 1960s. A reporter of the old school, McKelway was never portentous and rarely judgmental. As Adam Gopnik, a current writer for the New Yorker, shrewdly notes in his introduction to this collection of essays, he was not at all interested in trends; in the idea that more and more people were acting this way. Instead the classic McKelway piece says: “Very, very few people act this way, which is what makes the ones who do so interesting.”

站在楼梯间的人，是哈利.格雷斯曼——有史以来最出众的传票递送员。而以上的这个故事，是由圣克莱尔.马克威为《纽约客》杂志读者讲述的众多故事中的一则。圣克莱尔.马克威从上世纪三十年代到六十年代，一直以犀利眼光关注着城市底层的民众。作为一名保守型记者，马克威从不装腔作势，也极少评头论足。正如亚当.哥普尼克（现为《纽约客》撰稿人）为该故事集撰写的序言中的精炼总结——他（马克威）不是那种对潮流感兴趣的人（言下之意就是越来越多的人喜欢追求入流的东西）。然而，马克威的一个经典之作中有这么一句：“绝大、绝大多数的人是不赶潮流的，这就使那些喜欢追求时髦的人让人很感兴趣。”

In these essays they include the good as well as the bad. A beat cop interprets the force’s shop talk for McKelway: his shift is a tour, his uniform a bag, his winter overcoat a benny, an influential friend a rabbi and his wife, even to her face, the cook. Firebugs substitute old nags for thoroughbred horses before they set stables alight and then claim for valuable horseflesh from the insurers. A counterfeiter of banknotes cannot spell and renders the first American president as “Wahsington”. Yet for 20 years he gets away with passing off his funny money because he never succumbs to greed. He spends only a few dollars at a time and at different locations.

这些人物故事里，既有倒霉事儿，也有走运的事儿。”一名社区巡警如是为马克威转述警察们私下有关工作的趣谈：值班等于溜圈。制服让你裹成蚕茧，冬衣让你夹成汉堡包。一个影响你的朋友是“夫子”，而老婆则是厨子（即使当着老婆面，他们也这么叫）。纵火犯在放火烧马棚之前，会将棚里的良驹偷换成老马，之后便以损失良马为由，向保险公司索要赔偿。有个造假钞的，不识字，把美国国父的名字印成“花生顿”。不过那搞笑的钞票流通了二十年，他都从来没有被抓过。因为他从来不被贪婪所诱惑——他每次消费都只用几块钱，而且得手就走，绝不恋战。

All these stories are lucid. McKelway was often not. His fondness for booze helped ruin his five marriages and even worried his colleagues on the New Yorker, which is saying something. On joining the magazine, Brendan Gill, a contemporary, noticed that everybody there seemed to be feeling sick. “Later, I learned that many of them were sick with hangovers of varying degrees of acuteness.”

这些故事内容都很直白。但是马克威的脑子可不总是那么清白。他酗酒成性，已经让他五段婚姻都以失败告终，甚至还殃及他在《纽约客》的同事——这可很说明问题。布兰顿.吉尔（和他同时代的人）刚入职该杂志时，发现那里的每一个人好像都有点没睡醒。“后来我才搞清楚，原来他们很多人都还没有从前一晚的醉意中清醒过来。

It was McKelway’s good fortune to be tutored by Harold Ross, the editor of the New Yorker from 1925 to 1951. Like so many of his staff, Ross maintained the highest standards of journalism while sinking awesome amounts of liquor. His editing precision was legendary and he was so literal-minded that he even corrected literary quotations. In revising a piece that quoted Tennyson, for instance, he altered “nature red in tooth and claw” to “nature red in claw and tooth”, reasoning that a predator’s claws would be bloodied before its teeth. Ross insisted that “nothing was indescribable”; that the most complex idea or gizmo could be made intelligible.

马克威能有机会获得哈罗德.罗斯（《纽约客》1925年至1951年的总编）的真传，算是他这辈子的一大幸事。罗斯和他众多的同事一样，在灌下海量酒精的同时，仍能保证文稿有行业的一流水平。他审稿的精细程度令人叫绝。他字斟句酌，毫不含糊，他甚至会改正稿子里引用的名人名言的错误。举个例子，有一次，他审的稿子引用l丁尼生的话，文中写到“大自然的红牙血爪”。他先将“红牙血爪”改回为“血爪红牙”，然后解释道，食肉动物在用牙齿撕咬食物前，它的爪子肯定已经先沾满了血迹。罗斯坚持认为“任何事物都可以用语言表达的”，即使是最复杂的思想和事物都有可能被表达描述出来。

This exactness of observation and fascination with detail runs through McKelway’s essays. So does an acceptance of human frailty. As a sinner himself, McKelway tolerates, almost celebrates, the sins of others. He can only smile when the wife of an embezzler says: “Well, he’s a very fine man except for that one quirk.”

这种观察的精确和对细节的追求，贯穿马克威笔下的所有故事。他的文章中也贯穿了一种对于人类弱点的包容。因为自己就是一个有罪之人，所以马克威对于他人的罪过不但能容忍，甚至乐见于此。倘若一个贪污犯的妻子说“呃，除了那个毛病，他其实是个非常好的人。”他可能只会对此莞尔一笑。

译者：fhf208188
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Looking for ET
寻找ET

Signs of life
生命迹象

As the search for alien life turns 50, its practitioners find new methods
人类探寻外星生命迹象近半个世纪，探索者们又找到了新方法。

Feb 25th 2010 | SAN DIEGO | From The Economist print edition

Speak to me!跟我说话！

HALF a century ago a radio astronomer called Frank Drake thought of a way to calculate the likelihood of establishing contact with aliens. He suggested the following figures should be multiplied: how many stars are formed in the galaxy in a year; what fraction of these have planets and thus form solar systems; the average number of planets per solar system that have the potential to support life; on what percentage of those where it is possible do such biospheres actually form; what percentage of such biospheres give rise to intelligent species; what percentage of intelligent life is able to transmit signals into space; and for how long could such intelligence keeps sending signals.

半个世纪前，一位名叫法兰克•德雷克的无线电天文学家发明了一种计算探寻外星生命可能性的方法。他的方法包括一系列应该纳入考虑范围的数据：银河系每年新诞生的恒星数；拥有行星并组成了星系的恒星比率；有可能会出现生命迹象的行星平均数；以上行星能够真正孕育生命的比率；演化出了智能物种的比率；能使用无线电通讯与外太空联系的智能生物比率；智能生物使用无线电通讯方式的持续时间。

This calculation became celebrated as the Drake equation—perhaps the best attempt so far to tame a wild guess. Most of the terms remain hard to tie down, although there is a consensus that about ten stars are formed per year in the galaxy. Also, recent searches for extrasolar planets have concluded that planets are not rare.

这种计算方式便是后来著名的德雷克方程式——这也许是迄今为止对人类漫无边际的想象的最好归纳。尽管银河系每年新诞生约10颗恒星已成为共识，但是公式中还有很多要素没有具体数值。另外，近期对太阳系外行星的研究结论表示，行星数量并不算少。

At the AAAS, Dr Drake reflected on his search for alien signals. One reason this is hard is that radio telescopes must chop the spectrum into fine portions to study it, like tuning into a signal on a car radio. Another is the trade off between a telescope’s field of view and its magnification. Small telescopes see a lot of sky but can detect only strong signals. Large ones, which can detect weak signals, have a narrow focus. Astronomers therefore have difficulty looking both carefully and comprehensively.

作为美国艺术与科学院成员的德雷克博士对他的外星生命研究进行了反思。该项研究进展的困难之一是必须要用无线天文望远镜将频谱切割成精细的部分进行研究，这就像需要把车载收音机调准台一样。另一个则是需要在天文望远镜的视场和放大率之间进行取舍。小型天文望远镜视场更广但是只能探测到较强烈的信号。而大型天文望远镜，虽然可以探测到较微弱的信号，但视场却更窄。因此，天文学家们很难在视场和放大率之间鱼与熊掌兼得。

Dr Drake said there may be another difficulty. Researchers tend to look for signals similar to those now made by humanity. The Earth, though, is getting quieter because the rise of spread-spectrum communication makes stray emissions less likely than in the past.

德雷克博士曾表示，也许还会有其他的困难。研究者们倾向于寻找和人造信号相似的信号。然而，由于扩频通信技术的兴起，杂散发射减少，地球现在变得越来越“安静”了。

Spread-spectrum works by smearing a message across a wide range of frequencies. That has the advantages of combating noise and allowing many signals to be sent at once. But it also makes those signals hard for eavesdroppers to hear (which is why spread-spectrum is beloved by military men). If technologically sophisticated aliens came to the same conclusions, and thus used spread-spectrum technology, humans would have a hard time hearing them. Dr Drake suggests, therefore, that there might be only a narrow window of time in the development of civilisations, analogous to the past 50 years on Earth, during which noisy electromagnetic signals are generated in large amounts.

扩频通信利用宽频带信号传送信息。这一技术的优势在于其抗干扰性和多址信息传送性能，该技术同时还能很好的防止窃听（因此广受军事人员的青睐）。如果外星生物已经在技术上达到了这样的高度，并且也在使用扩频通信技术，那么人类想要捕获到它们发出的信号就得不是那么容易了。因此，德雷克博士表示，在人类文明发展的长河中也许只有在一个非常短暂的时间段里，譬如地球上的过去50年，人类制造了大量的电磁波信号。

It is, however, also possible that someone is actively trying to send signals to the Earth. If that were the case, the best way to do this, reckons Paul Horowitz, a physicist at Harvard, is with a laser.

但是，也可能有外星生物在不断往地球发送信号的。如果真的有，哈佛大学物理学家保罗•霍洛维茨认为，最好的发送方式便是使用激光发射。

Although radio power has changed little over the decades, the power of lasers has grown exponentially. Today’s most powerful versions can shine ten thousand times brighter than the sun, though only for a billionth of a second. If aliens have made similar progress, and point a laser towards the Earth’s solar system, such brief flashes would be detectable at a distance of many light-years. Dr Horowitz has already set up one suitable detector and this, because no huge magnification is involved, is capable of looking at broad swathes of sky.

尽管在过去的几十年里无线电功率几乎不变，但是激光的功率则呈指数增长。如今功率最大的激光机所发出的光瞬间可以比太阳所发出的光亮一万倍，即使维持的时间不超过十亿分之一秒。如果外星生物在技术上已经取得如此进步，并且向太阳系里的地球发射激光信号，那么这些激光信号在一定光年之后便很有可能会被人类探测出来。霍洛维茨博士已经建好了一个合适的探测仪，因为对放大率的要求不高，所以这个探测仪能够观测到较广的太空视场。

There is also potential for improvement on the radio side. For many years, the Arecibo telescope in Puerto Rico, which is 300 metres across, has led the search for alien life. (Sadly, its founder, William Gordon, died on February 16th.) Now the Chinese are building a 500-metre telescope, known as FAST, in Guizhou province, and an international collaboration called the Square Kilometre Array is trying, as its name suggests, to build a grid of radio-telescopes over a square kilometre of land in either South Africa or Australia. Both may be helpful. As indeed may a large new telescope in northern California built by Paul Allen, a co-founder of Microsoft.

在无线电探测方面也可能有所进展。位于波罗黎各的阿雷西博望远镜直径达300米，它在许多年里一直是外太空生命迹象探索和研究的引领者。（但不幸的是，其建造者威廉•戈登于2月16日去世了。）目前，中国也正在贵州省建造一个直径达500米的射电天文望远镜，名为FAST。而另一项名为“平方公里望远镜阵”的国际合作也即将在南非或澳大利亚展开，该项目正如其名，将在一平方公里的区域内修建起一个无线电天文望远镜阵列。这两个项目都可能会推动人类的外太空探索。同样做出贡献的还有微软创始人之一保罗•艾伦在加州北部建造的大型全新天文望远镜。

Many of the terms in the Drake equation are likely to remain elusive, so it is still impossible to predict how likely such efforts are to succeed. But even after 50 fruitless years—if the eagerness in the eyes of Dr Drake and his colleagues is any guide—it still is fun looking.

德雷克方程式中的很多要素依旧扑朔迷离，同样，要准确地预测人类探索的成功几率也不太现实。但是，即使过去的半个世纪里人类并无明显收获——从德雷克博士和他的同事们眼中的那股热忱来看——这样的探索仍然是很有意思的。

译者：lizst
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Canada’s Mohawks
加拿大的莫霍克人准备对白人实施种族隔离措施

Get out of our canoe
从我们的独木舟上滚开！

When a Canadian is not a Canadian
既然加拿大人不是加拿大人

Feb 25th 2010 | OTTAWA | From The Economist print edition

THE dozen chiefs who make up the Mohawk Council of Kahnawake expected criticism when they began presenting eviction notices this month to 25 non-natives living on their 13,000-acre (5,260-hectare) reserve just south of Montreal. They hoped Canadians would understand their desire to protect a threatened language and culture, and refrain from interfering in internal Mohawk affairs. But many saw their action as a racist and illegal denial of Canada’s constitutional Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Despite centuries of coexistence, the First Nations, as Canada’s indigenous people call themselves, and other Canadians still live in mutual incomprehension. For a start the Mohawks do not see themselves as Canadians.
      
当组成卡纳瓦基莫霍克人委员会的12位酋长于本月初开始将驱逐告示向居住在他们居留地[1.3万英亩（5260公顷），靠近蒙特利尔以南]上的25位非本族人宣示时，酋长们预料会受到指责。酋长们希望加拿大人能够理解其保护已受到威胁的语言和文化的愿望，保持克制，不干预莫霍克人的内部事务。但许多人认为，莫霍克人的行为是一种种族歧视，是与加拿大权利与自由宪章相悖的。尽管彼此共存已达几个世纪，自称原住民的加拿大土著人与其他加拿大人仍然生活在互不理解中。莫霍克人自始不认为自己是加拿大人。

The council passed a bylaw in 1984, supported by the majority of the reservation’s 8,000 residents, which stipulated that a person must have at least four Mohawk great grandparents to live or own property there. Any Mohawk who marries a non-native must leave. “Everyone knows the law: if you marry out, you stay out,” says Joe Delaronde, a spokesman for the council. “If we don’t protect who we are, we will become Canadian citizens.”
     
1984年，委员会通过了一项获得保留地8000名居民中的大多数支持的公约，规定：[欲具备]莫霍克人资格必须至少有四个莫霍克血亲祖（外祖）父母在此地居住或在此地拥有其财产。与非本族人结婚的任何莫霍克人都必须离开。“此约人所共知：如你配偶非我族类，那你就得滚蛋”，委员会发言人乔德拉龙德说道，“如果我们不确保我们的血统，那我们就会成为加拿大公民”。

Not such a terrible fate, you might think. But the leaders of many First Nations have been fighting assimilation for centuries. The Kahnawake reserve was originally set up by the French in 1716, when the Mohawks were their allies against the British. Shortly afterwards, some French traders were asked to leave. There have been many evictions since. A more prosaic reason is that First Nations receive federal money for social services only for officially registered natives. Yet there has also been a long history of intermarriage and adoption of non-natives. “Everyone in the community has mixed ancestry,” says Matthieu Sossoyan, an anthropologist.
   
你可能会认为，不至于有此可怕劫数吧。而许多原住民的领导人已经为免于被同化奋斗了几百年。卡纳瓦基居留区最初于1716年由法国人建立，当时，莫霍克人是法国人反抗英国的同盟。不久之后，一些法国商人被要求离开。自此以后，发生了许多驱逐事件。更平实的驱逐理由是，只有获得官方登记的本地原住民才能接受联邦社会福利资助。然而，异族通婚和异族收养的传统也一直承传，历史悠久。人类学家马修说道：“该居留区的每个人都已经混血了”。

Canada’s minister of Indian affairs admits the evictions make him “uncomfortable” but says he can do nothing because First Nations have the right to say who lives on reserves. The chiefs say that rather than the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, their relations with non-natives are governed by the Two-Row Wampum Treaty, agreed with Dutch traders in the 17th century. (The wampum, or beaded belt, showed two parallel lines on a pale background.) This called for mutual non-interference. “We stay in our canoe and you steer yours,” says Mr Delaronde.
     
加拿大印第安人事务部长坦承，驱逐事件让他“感到不安”，但无能为力。因为，原住民有权决定谁在居留地居住。酋长们说，与其遵守《权利和自由宪章》，倒不如尊崇确定与非土著人关系的条约《the Two-Row Wampum Treaty》（易洛魁联盟与荷兰政府代表于17世纪签订，The wampum也叫 beaded belt，表示在灰白背景下的两条平行线）。该条约主张互不干涉。德拉龙德先生对此表述为：“我划我的独木舟，你开你的大洋船”。

译者：微言大义
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International law
国际法

Pillar of wisdom
智慧的基石

Feb 11th 2010 | From The Economist print edition

The Rule of Law. By Tom Bingham. Allen Lane; 213 pages; £20. Buy from Amazon.co.uk

《法治》，作者汤姆•宾厄姆（Tom Bingham），艾伦•雷恩出版社出版；20英镑。可从Amazon.co.uk网站购买

TOM BINGHAM holds that what has come to be known as the rule of law is “the nearest we are likely to approach to a universal secular religion”. The key word is “universal”. Nigel Lawson, Margaret Thatcher’s chancellor of the exchequer, once described the National Health Service (NHS) as being similarly important to the British, but as Barack Obama’s attempts to reform America’s health-care system demonstrate, the NHS is not the envy of the world. For most people who live under the rule of law its blessings can be clearer and less ambiguous even than those conferred by liberal democracy or free markets.

汤姆•宾厄姆认为我们眼中的法治是“我们可能企及的一种普世的世俗宗教”。关键词是“普世的”。撒切尔夫人担任首相期间的英国财政大臣尼格尔•劳森(Nigel Lawson)曾把国民健康服务机制（NHS）称为是对每个英国人都是同等重要的，但正如巴拉克•奥巴马尝试改革美国的医保体制所展现的一样，国民健康服务机制也并非是整个世界钦羡的对象。对生活在法治社会的大多数人而言，其所带来的福祉比自由民主抑或自由市场给予的将更加实在。

Uniquely, Lord Bingham has held all three of Britain’s great judicial offices: Master of the Rolls[1], Lord Chief Justice and Senior Law Lord until his retirement in 2008. In recent times no British jurist other than Lord Denning has wielded more influence on the development of the law. In this short but important book, Lord Bingham begins by outlining the historical milestones (from the Magna Carta to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted in 1948) that have contributed to understanding what is meant by the rule of law and what he believes are eight essential principles that underpin it.

宾厄姆勋爵曾先后担任英国的三个重要司法职位：上诉法院民事庭庭长，首席大法官，高级司法议员，直到2008年退休。这是英国历史上是独一无二的。近些年来，除了丹宁勋爵，英国没有哪个法学家对法律的发展发挥这么大的影响。在这本短小而又重要的书中，宾汉勋爵开篇就梳理了历史上的重大事件（从《英国大宪章》到1948年批准的《世界人权宣言》），帮助我们理解法治内涵以及他认为的奠定法治基础的八项基本原则。

Among these are the accessibility of the law, equality before the law, the right to a fair trial, the legal accountability of servants of the state and so on. Most of Lord Bingham’s eight principles are uncontroversial, although some will feel that, in defining his preference for a “thick” over a “thin” definition of the rule of law, he goes too far by including social injustices, such as a right to education, which he feels “no one living in a free democratic society…should be required to forgo”.

这八项基本原则包括，法的可及性，法律面前人人平等，获得公正审判的权利，政府职员的法律责任等等。宾厄姆勋爵的八项基本原则大多数没有争议，尽管有人会认为，宾厄姆勋爵在解释他在定义“法治”这一概念上避“简”就“繁”的偏好时，走得太远，把针对社会不公的问题也囊括在内，比如受教育权。－－他认为“生活在自由民主社会的任何一个人都不应被迫放弃”该项权利。

However, it is when he gets to his final point, the requirement that states should regard their obligations under international law as no less forceful than those under national laws, that he really makes his mark. In a cool, but deadly dissection of the assault on the rule of law that was launched by the so-called “war on terror”, Lord Bingham deals first with the question of whether the allied invasion of Iraq was legal. He has no doubt that it was not. He argues persuasively that neither Security Council resolutions 678 nor 1441 could bear the weight that the British government was forced to place on them when confronted by the failure to obtain a further resolution explicitly authorising the use of force. One cannot help feeling that Tony Blair and Lord Goldsmith might have had a hotter time under examination by Lord Bingham than by the Chilcot panel.

但是，当他谈到最后一点，即要求政府应该将他们在国际法中的义务与国内法的义务同等对待时，这一点使他真正在法制史上留下了重重的一笔。宾厄姆勋爵对所谓的“反恐战争”对法治发起的攻击进行了冷静的分析，击中了其要害。他先是谈及了对伊拉克的联合入侵是否合法的问题。他毫不怀疑得指出，这是不合法的。无论是安理会的678号决议还是1441号决议，都不足以使英国政府在没获得一个明确授权使用武力的决议时出兵伊拉克。人们不禁会想，布莱尔和总检察长戈德史密斯勋爵如果遇到了宾厄姆勋爵而非柴考特调查小组，两人的日子将更加难过。

His greatest concern is the way in which the threat of terrorism has been used to justify the encroachment on civil liberties. Lord Bingham takes to task governments both in Britain and abroad who subvert the rule of law in the name of security, using Orwellian euphemisms such as control orders (house arrest without trial), extraordinary rendition (kidnapping) and enhanced interrogation techniques (torture). And he quotes Benjamin Franklin with approval: “He who would put security before liberty deserves neither.”

宾厄姆勋爵最担心的是假借恐怖主义的威胁之名，侵犯公民自由的行为。宾厄姆勋爵训斥了英国其其它国家政府以安全为幌子亵渎法治，指出这些政府用些奥威尔式的委婉语，比如控制令（未经审判的软禁）、非常规引渡（绑架）、讯问的高级技巧（严刑逼供）等。他引用了本杰明•富兰克林的话：“谁若将安全置于自由之首，谁就即无安全亦无自由。”对此，他深表赞同。

Lord Bingham ends by asking what makes the difference between good and bad government. It is, of course, the rule of law. He concludes: “It remains an ideal, but an ideal worth striving for, in the interests of good government and peace, at home and in the world at large.”

宾厄姆勋爵在其结尾处，问了一个问题。什么可以区别政府治理的好坏。显然，是法治。他的结论是，“这仍是一个理想，但其是一个值得追求的理想，为了良好的政府治理和和平，不管是在英国还是整个世界。”

[1] The Keeper or Master of the Rolls and Records of the Chancery of England, known as the Master of the Rolls, is the second most senior judge in England and Wales, after the Lord Chief Justice. The Master of the Rolls is the presiding officer of the Civil Division of the Court of Appeal.

[2] The Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales is the head of the judiciary of England and Wales. Historically, he was the second-highest judge of the Courts of England and Wales, after the Lord Chancellor, but that changed as a result of the Constitutional Reform Act 2005, which removed the judicial functions from the office of Lord Chancellor. The Lord Chief Justice is also the presiding judge of the Criminal Division of the Court of Appeal.

[3] Lords of Appeal in Ordinary, commonly known as Law Lords, were appointed under the Appellate Jurisdiction Act 1876 to the House of Lords of the United Kingdom in order to exercise its judicial functions, which included acting as the highest court of appeal for most domestic matters. The House of Lords, however, lost its judicial functions upon the establishment of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom in October 2009; those in office became Justices of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom and lost their right to speak and vote in the House of Lords until their retirement as Justices of the new court

译者：davidship
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Competition policy
竞争政策

Prosecutor, judge and jury
检察官、法官、陪审团三职合一

Feb 18th 2010 | From The Economist print edition

Enforcement of competition law in Europe is unjust and must change
在欧洲，竞争法的实施有失公正、亟待修正

EUROPE’S trustbusters have plenty to boast about. Over several decades the European Commission’s competition directorate has evolved into perhaps the most important regulator of its kind in the world. It has been rigorous in the development of antitrust theory and an energetic enforcer of the law. While antitrust policy across the Atlantic has veered between the activism of the Clinton administration and the relative laissez-faire of the Bush years, it has shown consistency. More than any other body it has upheld the principles of the single market, often incurring the wrath of powerful member states. Yet despite its fine record, there are deep flaws in the way the directorate operates. The priority of the new competition commissioner, Joaquín Almunia, must be to address them.

欧洲的反托拉斯阵线大有夸耀之处。在过去的数十年中，欧盟委员会下设的竞争理事会凭借其对推动反托拉斯理念演变的一丝不苟以及强劲的执法力度，可以说已发展成为全球同类监管机构中最举足轻重的典范。尽管大西洋彼岸的反托拉斯政策已在克林顿政府的激进主义与布什政府相对的放任主义之间找到折中的道路，但理事会依然坚持其一贯性。没有另外一个机构比它更加维护单一市场原则，这经常招致欧盟几大强国的极度不满。尽管业绩良好，理事会在运作上仍然存在着严重问题。因此新任竞争事务专员杰奎英•阿尔穆尼亚的第一要务就是将其解决掉。

The problems are not new, but they have been given fresh salience by the fallout from the European Union’s case against Intel (see article). Last May the commission fined the chipmaker a record 1.06 billion euro($1.5 billion) under Article 82 (now 102) of the European treaty, which forbids dominant firms from abusing their power. The specific complaint against Intel, brought by its smaller rival, AMD, was that it had bribed PC-makers to buy its own processors.

这些问题其实并不陌生，但是英特尔案件掀起的风波使其获得全新的关注。去年五月，欧盟委员会参照《欧洲联盟条约》第82条（现为第102条）对芯片制造商英特尔公司处以10亿6千万欧元（15亿美元）的罚款纪录，其所涉条款正是为禁止垄断企业滥用实力而设。规模较小的行业竞争者闪龙公司针对英特尔公司进行了投诉，据称，后者贿赂个人电脑制造商购买其处理器。

The sheer size of the fine had an element of grandstanding about it. But a much bigger worry was that the commission’s trustbusters may have ignored evidence that could have weakened their case and made Intel’s conduct look less sinister. The EU’s ombudsman found that in the course of the commission’s investigation, it had failed to keep a record of a meeting with a senior executive from Dell, one of Intel’s biggest customers. Critics, whose concerns have increased with the ferocity of the sanctions imposed, say that by acting simultaneously as investigator, prosecutor, jury and sentencing judge, the commission is denying defendant firms the basic right to be heard by an impartial tribunal. They are right.

这笔十足的罚款数额不免哗众取宠的成分。但更令人担心的是，欧盟委员会的反托拉斯官员可能忽视了一些能够在一定程度上削弱其诉讼理由并减轻英特尔公司罪行的证据。欧盟的巡视官发现，在其调查过程中，委员会与戴尔公司一高管的谈话没有记录下来，而戴尔公司正是英特尔公司最大的客户之一。批评家们的担忧随所施制裁的严酷程度与日俱增，他们表示，通过同时扮演调查者、检察官、陪审团以及审判法官的角色，委员会实则剥夺了被告公司诉诸于公正法庭的基本权利。他们说得在理。

The rules under which the competition directorate operates, which date back nearly half a century, are grossly inadequate for the hugely enhanced role it plays today. There are three main objections. The first is the conflicted role of the case teams. These are appointed when the competition directorate decides to investigate a complaint about abusive behaviour from a business rival, an accusation of collusion or a merger with potentially anti-competitive consequences. The case teams investigate, propose a verdict and argue for a particular penalty. From the outset, the process is polluted by a prosecutorial bias. The second objection is that the accused company is denied a fair hearing. Although it gets the chance to put forward its side of the argument, it does so only to the case team, not to a neutral judge or hearing officer. As things stand, the role of the hearing officer is purely procedural. The third objection is that the final decision on culpability is taken on a vote by 27 politically appointed commissioners, only one of whom may have attended the defendant’s hearing.

竞争理事会的运作所依托的规则已有将近半个世纪的历史，对于支撑理事会如今大幅度提升的作用只能是捉襟见肘。这其中主要存在着三项异议。其一在于专案组的冲突性角色。当竞争委员会决定调查对一商业竞争者不正当行为的投诉、对相互勾结行为的控告或者具有潜在的反竞争性后果的合并时，它会指派专案组进行调查、发表裁定意见并对某一特定处罚进行论证。于是从一开始，这一诉讼就带有检控偏见。其二在于被控公司得不到公平的听审机会。尽管被允许做出我方申辩，但被告面对的只有专案组，而并非中立的法官或者听证官员。久而久之，听证官一职变得纯粹地程序化。其三在于最终问责取决于27名由政界委任的专员，而其中仅有一人可能参与到被告的听审之中。

A fair hearing, please
请给予公正的申辩之机

In no other area of law would it be thought acceptable for the outcome of such important cases to be determined by a bunch of politicians. In America the antitrust division of the Department of Justice has to make its arguments in open court, while even the quasi-judicial commissioners of the Federal Trade Commission appoint a judge to preside over hearings and publish findings. The process is long-winded and expensive but it is an intrinsically fairer way to establish the facts.

没有其它任何一个司法领域能够接受如此重要的案件结果由一帮政客来操纵。在美国，司法部下设的反托拉斯部门必须在公开庭审中展开论述，就连联邦贸易委员会的准司法专员也需要指派一名法官来主持听审并公布裁决。这一过程在时间与金钱上付出的代价更大，但它不失为一种更加公平的方式来弄清事件的原委。

Even if Mr Almunia procrastinates, change is coming. Europe’s Charter of Fundamental Rights will finally be ratified next year. It is highly probable that antitrust appeals to the European Court of Human Rights (based on the unfairness of a process that levies huge fines but falls far short of the standards expected of the criminal law) will succeed. Realistically, amending the treaty to remove the commission’s role as the enforcer of competition law is a non-starter. A more modest change would, however, improve things greatly and bring European practice closer to America’s without importing all its excesses. That is to give the hearing officer the power to make a factual and legal determination based on a proper examination of the evidence; the 27 commissioners would then have to accept or reject this. The system would still be far from perfect, but it would be a good deal more just.

即使阿尔穆尼亚因循坐误，变革终将到来。明年，《欧盟基本权利宪章》将正式生效。这样一来，向欧洲人权法庭提起反托拉斯上诉的制度（基于徵收巨额罚款并远不及刑法尺度的诉讼所体现出的不公平性）极有可能建立起来。现实地讲，通过修改条约来解除欧盟委员会作为竞争法执法者的权力是行不通的。恰恰是较为温和的变革才能较大程度地改善现状，将欧洲的执法实践与美国接轨并摒弃其一切过度行为。也就是说，要给予听证官足够的权力，以基于对证据恰当的审度就事实问题与法律问题做出裁定；之后，27名专员必须对此进行明确的表决。即使如此，这一司法体系仍将劣迹斑斑，但它无疑会变得更加公正。

译者：yveschrischou
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How siestas help memory
午睡怎样增进记忆力

Sleepy heads
昏昏欲睡的大脑

Feb 25th 2010 | SAN DIEGO | From The Economist print edition

Researchers say an afternoon nap prepares the brain to learn

研究者认为午睡可以让头脑更清醒，学习更高效

MAD dogs and Englishmen, so the song has it, go out in the midday sun. And the business practices of England’s lineal descendant, America, will have you in the office from nine in the morning to five in the evening, if not longer. Much of the world, though, prefers to take a siesta. And research presented to the AAAS meeting in San Diego suggests it may be right to do so. It has already been established that those who siesta are less likely to die of heart disease. Now, Matthew Walker and his colleagues at the University of California, Berkeley, have found that they probably have better memory, too. A post-prandial snooze, Dr Walker has discovered, sets the brain up for learning.

疯狗和英国人——正如这首歌唱到的那样——正午时分顶着太阳外出。而英国人的直系后裔——美国公司的惯例会让你朝九晚五地呆在办公室里，甚至更长时间。但是世界上大部分人还是更喜欢来个午觉。一份提交到在圣迭戈举行的AAAS科学年会的报告中说：这么做是正确的。有午睡习惯的人很少有死于心脏类疾病的——这个已成定论。现在，马修·沃克和他在加利福尼亚大学伯克利分校的同事发现这些人很可能记忆力也会比其他人好。沃克博士发现，午餐之后打个小盹会让头脑更清醒，学习更高效。

The role of sleep in consolidating memories that have already been created has been understood for some time. Dr Walker has been trying to extend this understanding by looking at sleep’s role in preparing the brain for the formation of memories in the first place. He was particularly interested in a type of memory called episodic memory, which relates to specific events, places and times. This contrasts with procedural memory, of the skills required to perform some sort of mechanical task, such as driving. The theory he and his team wanted to test was that the ability to form new episodic memories deteriorates with accrued wakefulness, and that sleep thus restores the brain’s capacity for efficient learning.

人们早已知道睡眠能够巩固已建立的记忆。沃克正在试图扩展这一认识，他的办法是观察睡眠在大脑记忆形成的初始阶段扮演的角色。他的兴趣点在一种叫做“事件记忆”的记忆上，这种记忆与时间、地点和次数相关联。和这种记忆相反的是“程序记忆”，是记住那种完成机械任务所需的技能，例如开车。他和他的团队想验证的理论是：一个人随着清醒状态的加深，其形成新的“事件记忆”的能力就会减弱；还有，睡觉因此就能恢复大脑高效学习的能力。

They asked a group of 39 people to take part in two learning sessions, one at noon and one at 6pm. On each occasion the participants tried to memorise and recall 100 combinations of pictures and names. After the first session they were assigned randomly to either a control group, which remained awake, or a nap group, which had 100 minutes of monitored sleep.

他们找来39个人来参加两个时间段的学习——一个在中午，一个在晚上6点。在每段时间的学习中，参与者都要努力去记住并且回忆100组图片和名字的组合。在第一个时间段的学习过后，参与者被任意安排到两组：一组是“受控制组”——必须一直保持清醒；一组是“打盹儿组”——有100分钟的睡觉时间，期间全程监控。

Those who remained awake throughout the day became worse at learning. Those who napped, by contrast, actually improved their capacity to learn, doing better in the evening than they had at noon. These findings suggest that sleep is clearing the brain’s short-term memory and making way for new information.

从头到尾一直保持清醒的那群人的学习效果变差了。而那些小睡的人则相反——他们提高了学习能力，在晚上的表现要优于中午。这些发现表明睡觉加强了短期记忆，而且为吸收新信息铺平了道路。

It is already well known that fact-based memories are stored temporarily in an area called the hippocampus, a structure in the centre of the brain. But they do not stay there long. Instead, they are sent to the prefrontal cortex for longer-term storage. Electroencephalograms, which measure electrical activity in the brain, have shown that this memory-refreshing capacity is related to a specific type of sleep called Stage 2 non-REM sleep.

人们都知道知识性的记忆会被存在一个叫作“海马”的区域，该结构位于大脑中心。但是这些记忆并不会在那里停留很长时间，而是会被发送到前额皮质以备长期储存。测量脑电活动的脑电图显示，这种记忆转移的能力和一种叫作“第二阶段非REM睡眠”的特定状态的睡眠有关。

The ideal nap, then, follows a cycle of between 90 and 100 minutes. The first 30 minutes is a light sleep that helps improve motor performance. Then comes 30 minutes of stage 2 sleep, which refreshes the hippocampus. After this, between 60 and 90 minutes into the nap, comes rapid-eye-movement, or REM, sleep, during which dreaming happens. This, research suggests, is the time when the brain makes connections between the new memories that have just been “downloaded” from the hippocampus and those that already exist—thus making new experiences relevant in a wider context.

理想的小睡遵循一个90-100分钟的周期。头30分钟是浅睡，帮助改善运动功能。然后是30分钟的第二阶段睡眠，在此期间，“海马”得到唤起。之后，小睡的60到90分钟之间是“快速眼动睡眠”，或被叫作REM，期间会有梦境发生。研究表明，在这段时间，大脑将刚刚从海马里“下载”来的新记忆和那些已存记忆建立了联系——从而使新体验与更广阔的背景相关联。

The benefits to memory of a nap, says Dr Walker, are so great that they can equal an entire night’s sleep. He warns, however, that napping must not be done too late in the day or it will interfere with night-time sleep. Moreover, not everyone awakens refreshed from a siesta.

沃克博士说，小睡的好处非常大，甚至抵得过一整夜的睡眠。但是他也建议白天的小睡不应睡得太晚，否则会影响夜间的睡眠。除此之外，也并不是所有人都能在午睡之后精神充沛的。

The grogginess that results from an unrefreshing siesta is termed “sleep inertia”. This happens when the brain is woken from a deep sleep with its cells still firing at a slow rhythm and its temperature and blood flow decreased. Sara Mednick, from the University of California, San Diego, suggests that non-habitual nappers suffer from this more often than those who siesta regularly. It may be that those who have a tendency to wake up groggy are choosing not to siesta in the first place. Perhaps, though, as in so many things, it is practice that makes perfect.

因午睡而引起的不清醒状态被称作“睡眠惰性”，发生在大脑从深睡中醒来之时，这个时候，脑细胞仍然在慢节奏律动，大脑温度低，血流速度缓慢。位于圣迭戈的加利福尼亚大学的萨拉·麦德尼克说，没有午睡习惯的人和有规律午睡的人比起来更容易发生这种情形。这可能是因为那些醒来容易头脑晕沉的人平时很少午睡的原因。但是，也许只有多多午睡，才能少少头晕。熟能生巧嘛！万事同理。

译者：eastx
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A country’s agonising birth

备受苦难而生的国家

Feb 25th 2010 | From The Economist print edition

Ready to die for freedom 准备为自由献身

“If You Leave Us Here, We Will Die”: How Genocide Was Stopped in East Timor. By Geoffrey Robinson. Princeton University Press; 317 pages; $35 and £24.95. Buy from Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk

《你们走了，我们会死的！——东帝汶种族灭绝终结记》，杰弗里•鲁滨逊著，普林斯顿大学出版社出版，317页，售价35美元或24.95英磅，可从Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk网站购买。

FEW countries have suffered as much, merely to be counted as countries, as did Timor-Leste, the former Indonesian province of East Timor. Under the Indonesian occupation from 1975 to 1999, perhaps one-third of the population died before their time. Survivors suffered hunger, deprivation, torture and systematic terror. Against the odds, on August 30th 1999 the East Timorese found themselves with the chance of a vote to choose between independence or autonomy under Indonesian rule. Turnout was 98.6%. Of those, four in five voted for independence.

很少有什么国家，只不过为了要（被人们）当做国家（看待）， 就像东帝汶（前印尼的东帝汶省）那样， 遭受过那么多的苦难。在1975年到1999年印尼占领期间，大约三分之一的人死亡。幸存者遭受饥饿、贫困、酷刑和有组织的恐怖袭击。临此困境，1999年8月30日，东帝汶人利用公投机会作出抉择——是独立为一个国家还是成为印尼统治下的一个自治省。投票率达到98.6％，其中，五分之四赞成独立。

The author of this fine book, Geoffrey Robinson, was there that day, as a member of the United Nations mission that organised the poll. Before that, as an academic and human-rights researcher, he was one of a small doughty band of foreigners who helped keep East Timor alive as an international issue, at a time when most governments preferred to cultivate good ties with Suharto, Indonesia’s dictator.

本佳作的作者杰弗里•鲁滨逊，作为联合国主持全民公投特派团成员之一，当时就在东帝汶。此前，他作为一位学者和人权研究员，曾是一个勇敢的外国人小团体的成员，在那时大多数政府都宁愿与印尼独裁者苏哈托建立良好关系[的背景下]，他为将东帝汶持续作为国际关注的重大问题提供了积极的帮助。

Mr Robinson was also there in the nightmarish aftermath of the referendum: as Indonesian-sponsored militias trashed the country, hundreds died and terrified refugees took shelter in the UN compound in Dili. That period provides the book’s title. “If you leave us here, we will die,” was what a Timorese woman in the compound told a visiting UN delegation.

在全民公投所招致的恶梦般创伤期间，罗宾逊先生也在东帝汶：亲印尼民兵组织捣毁了这个国家、成百上千的人死亡、恐惧的难民们涌到联合国在帝力的避难营避难。这一时期为本书提供了书名 “你们走了，我们会死的”——这是在避难营的一位东帝汶妇女向到访的联合国代表团诉说时的一句话。

But in fact the title sells both East Timor and the book seriously short. That a second genocide was averted in the country should not conceal the ugly truth that the outside world ignored and connived at the first, in the terrible years after Indonesia’s invasion. And the title misrepresents the book because, though enlivened by the narrative of Mr Robinson’s own time as a participant in and eyewitness to the events described, it is also a subtle and nuanced work of history and analysis.

其实，这本书的书名不仅对东帝汶而且就是对这本书本身都作了低估。该国第二次种族灭绝得以幸免这一事实不应当（用来）掩盖（此前）在印尼入侵之后那些恐怖的岁月里，外间的世界是如何对这第一次种族灭绝视而不见（甚至）默许纵容的丑陋真相。因为该书是讲究微妙曲折的历史之作，理论分析之作， 所以该书书名配不上书中的内容， 尽管作者亲历其境，目击暴行， 描写生动。

It contrasts the way the world looked the other way in 1975 with the swift intervention by an Australian-led peacekeeping force in 1999. That was in part a consequence of press attention, the courage of the East Timorese and a unique, brief period in history when “liberal interventionism” seemed to have a future. It also owed something to a collective sense of guilt over past atrocities in Srebrenica, Rwanda and East Timor itself.

本书比较了1975年世界对[暴行]视而不见和1999年澳大利亚为首的维和部队实施的快速干预方式。[认为]该快速干预在某种程度上说，是媒体关注、东帝汶人民的勇气和“自由干涉主义”似乎有了前途这一空前绝后、稍纵即逝的历史时刻共同作用的结果，该快速干预也部分地归因于外间世界的一种集体负疚感， 这种负疚感来自过去对发生于斯雷布雷尼察、卢旺达和东帝汶本身的罪行视而不见。

As for Indonesia, the behaviour of its soldiers and their local allies was sadly not an aberration. The outcome was predictable as soon as the flawed UN mandate put the security for the referendum in the hands of the main threat to it: the Indonesian army. Mr Robinson traces the violence back to the Suharto regime’s original sin, the massacre of hundreds of thousands as it took power in 1965-66.

可悲的是， 就印尼而言， 其士兵及当地盟军的暴行并不是什么脱离常轨的行为。一旦联合国那份有缺陷的训令把公民投票的安保权力交给对公民投票构成主要威胁的印尼军队手中，这个血腥的结果就完全可以预见了。罗宾逊先生追溯[印尼]暴力，直至苏哈托政权的原罪上——1965年至1966年苏掌权时期对数十万人的大屠杀。

The strategies of violence, he notes, were “implicitly legitimised”,not just because of the state’s involvement, but because the criminals were never punished. Ten years on not a single Indonesian official has been convicted of any crime in East Timor, and the idea of an international tribunal has been, in effect, ditched.

罗宾逊指出：那一次暴力所采取的策略已经被“暗暗地合法化了”，——不仅是因为插手是以国家的名义，还因为罪犯从未受到惩罚。 在长达10多年时间里，在东帝汶没有一个印尼裔官员因任一犯罪行为被判决有罪，而关于建立国际法庭的想法在事实上已束之高阁。

译者：微言大义
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Tech.view
科技视角

World Wide Wait
全球等待

The faster the internet becomes, the slower it loads pages
网速越高网页加载速度反而越慢

Feb 12th 2010 | From The Economist print edition

EVER noticed how long it takes for web pages to load these days? You click on a link and wait and wait, and then wait some more, for the content to trickle in. If nothing has happened after ten seconds or so, your impatient correspondent hits the browser’s stop button followed by the reload key. In desperation, he sometimes loads the link into a second or even a third browser tab as well, and bombards the website’s server with multiple requests for the page. If that fails, he gives up in disgust and reads a newspaper instead.
你是否留意过，如今打开网页需要多长时间？点击某个链接，你就开始等待，等了好久。看看，不行，还得再等一会，等着网页的内容姗姗来迟。如果等了10秒左右，仍然什么都没有，不耐烦的用户就会点击“刷新”键后面的“关闭”按钮。有时用户感觉十分不爽，“唰唰唰”，一下把这个链接点开两三个窗口，同时发出多个网页请求，对网站服务器进行“轰炸”。如果还是打不开，用户就会一脸厌恶地走开，转而去读报纸了。

Back in the early days of the internet, when most web users relied on dial-up connections, browsers were crude and web graphics were clumsy GIF files, eight seconds was considered the maximum people would stick around for a page to load. To increase “stickiness”, web designers pared their HTML code to the bone, collated their style-sheet data and JavaScripts into single files for more efficient caching elsewhere on the web, used fewer graphics and embraced the PNG and JPEG picture formats, with their smaller file sizes, as soon as they became available. Compared with text, pictures really were the equivalent of 1,000 words, at least when it came to the time taken to transmit them.
在因特网发展初期，大多数用户使用拨号连接，浏览器功能简单，网页图像都是粗糙的GIF文件。8秒，被视作用户打开网页的最大等待时间。为了让用户们不轻易关掉网页，网页设计人员将HTML编码大幅精简，将网页样式表和Java脚本文件整合成单个文件，以求浏览其它网页时有更高效的预读缓存技术。此外尽量少使用图像，而PNG和JPEG图形格式一经问世，就因其较小的文件规模而受到设计人员的青睐。同文字相比，图形就相当于1000个单字（至少在传输时间上如此）。

When your correspondent hand-coded The Economist’s first website back in 1994, a typical web page was about 50 kilobytes in size and dial-up modems could transfer no more than three kilobytes a second. To stay under the “eight-second rule”, pictures were kept to a minimum, so no page took more than three or four seconds to begin loading and never longer than 20 seconds to complete. The irony is that, with broadband nowadays more or less everywhere, overall connection speeds have gone up by leaps and bounds, yet the time taken to load web pages seems only to have got longer.
1994年设计人员手工编码完成了经济学人的第一个网站，当时的网页一般都大约50KB，而拨号调制解调器的传输速率不过3KB/s。为遵循“八秒准则”，图片都压至最少，所以网页不到三四秒就能开始加载，完成不超过20秒。具有讽刺意味的是，如今宽带基本实现普及，整体连接速率的提高更是一日千里，然而打开网页的等待时间却不减反增。

Your correspondent is admittedly near the end of the road for a digital subscriber line (DSL) connection. But even at three miles (5km) from the local telephone exchange, the speed of his broadband connection has inched up over the past few years from 65 kilobytes a second to more than 90 kilobytes a second—as the local line has been tweaked and legacy equipment like echo-cancelling coils removed from its junction boxes.
一般而言，客户都靠近数字用户线路（DSL）的末端。经过当地电信局信号转换后，即使再传输到3英里（5千米）之外，得益于当地线路微调，以及分线箱中回音消除器等陈旧设备的淘汰，宽带连接速度仍能从原来的65KB/s小幅增加到90KB/s。

Sure, he could get 650 kilobytes a second or more from a cable connection. But that would mean ditching his otherwise excellent satellite-TV service. Besides, optical fibre is slowly working its way up his hillside. He could soon have access to the internet at more than six megabytes a second—providing he is prepared to pay $140 a month instead of $21 for his existing DSL connection.
当然客户如果家里装了有线电视，速度会达到650KB/s甚至更高，那样家里原有的卫星电视也就形同虚设，用不上了。更何况，光纤正慢慢地向客户家所在的小山铺设，很快客户将能用上带宽高于6MB/s的因特网——前提是他放弃当前每月费用21美元的DSL连接，而每月交纳140美元享受这高带宽。

A 70-fold increase in speed for a sevenfold increase in price would seem a bargain. But your correspondent is not sure that more raw speed will solve the glacial loading problem. Even with his wimpy DSL connection, pages are rendered quickly enough once the website’s servers (and all the other computers along the route, plus those used to host adverts, graphics and miscellaneous layout bits) start giving his browser’s request some attention. The trouble is getting their attention in the first place.
速度增加70倍，价格才涨了7倍，似乎很划得来。可是客户心里没底儿：单纯的提速能否解决网页加载慢这个大问题？虽然DSL的速度很窝囊，一旦浏览器请求信息被服务器（也包括传输路线上的其它计算机，以及提供广告、图片以及页面上各种小版块的主机）受理，网页仍可以很快打开。问题就在于，如果让它们快速受理。

Before two computers can exchange information, they have to agree to talk to one another. Under normal conditions, this requires the user’s computer to send a request to the host computer, which then sends a response back to the user. Only after this “handshaking” is complete can the exchange of data commence. The time taken for this round-trip of request and acknowledgment determines the network’s latency.
两台计算机进行信息交换，首先他们要达成协议。一般而言，用户向主机发送请求信息，主机收到后向用户回复。只有经过这样一个“握手”后，数据交换才能开始。这个过程中请求信息和确认信息来回所花费的时间决定了当前网络的延时。

The latency cannot be less than the distance the electromagnetic signal has to travel divided by the speed of light. For instance, your correspondent’s home in Los Angeles is 400 miles from a colleague’s in San Francisco. In theory, then, the shortest round-trip between the two locations is 4.3 milliseconds. But if you “ping” the other computer, you’ll get a round-trip time of typically 700 milliseconds. That is still pretty quick, but it shows just how much time is spent waiting around for the various servers involved to handle the request.
延时势必大于等于电磁波以光速在这段距离上传输所需的时长。举个例子，客户家住洛杉矶，距旧金山一个同事400英里。理论上讲，电磁波在两个地点往返最短时间是4.3毫秒。而如果你使用ping命令测试网络连接，得到的延时一般都是700毫秒。尽管延时已经很小，这表明了信息传输时，在各个处理请求信息的相关服务器上等待所花费的时间。

There are many places along the way where the message can get bogged down. Queues can build up at routing servers that switch data packages along different routes to their destinations depending on the traffic. Worst of all, the DNS (Domain Name Server) computers used by your ISP can be overwhelmed as they try to translate the names of all the websites subscribers want to visit (say, www.economist.com) into their actual internet addresses (216.35.68.215). If you know it, try using the website’s numerical address rather than its verbose URL (Universal Resource Locator) name. That can sometimes halve the response time.
信息在传输线路中很多地方都会发生拥堵。路由服务器依据信息拥塞情况，为数据包选择不同的路径，最终都能到达目的地址。这样一来，路由器可能会有数据包大排长龙等待处理。客户的网络提供商使用的域名服务器（DNS）主机把用户访问的网站名（比如ww.economist.com）解析成实际的网络地址（216.35.68.215）。最坏情况下，解析信息过多会使解析服务器主机发生拥塞。如果你了解了这一点，以后上网时可以使用网站的数字地址，不要再罗罗嗦嗦地敲URL（统一资源定位器）名了。这样可能节省一半的响应时间。

The bottlenecks—whether at the DNS translators, the routing computers or the host’s own servers—stem largely from the way the mix of internet traffic has changed faster than the infrastructure used to carry it. Websites that were once just 50 kilobytes of text and tiny pictures now come with music, video and animated graphics. YouTube, Hulu, iTunes and BitTorrent have much to answer for.
不论是DNS解析器，路由选择主机抑或是主机自带的服务器，其瓶颈不在于信息传输的网络基础设施，而皆在于，当前网络传输信息组合方式的变动步伐日益加快。曾经只有50KB的文本外加一丁点图片的网站如今已是音乐、视频、动画，样样俱全。youtube，Hulu，iTunes和比特流等大型网站花样更多。

It is even worse on the mobile phone companies’ proprietary networks. Carriers are struggling to keep up with demand as subscribers use their smart-phones to check Facebook, stream videos from YouTube and play interactive games. Where a mid-range smart-phone would consume about 100 megabytes of data a month, more advanced models like the Apple iPhone or Motorola Droid, with fully fledged browsers and access to thousands of downloadable applications, tend to consume over 500 megabytes a month. With the imminent arrival of tablet computers like the iPad, which come with wireless modems, the appetite for downloadable data could hit a gigabyte a month (see the lead story in this week’s Business section).
移动电话公司的专用网络情况更差。用户们通过智能手机上Facebook，在youtube上看视频，玩在线游戏等，公司则尽力满足客户们的网络需求。一个中等的智能机每月使用流量约100M，而更高级的智能机，比如苹果的iPhone和摩托罗拉的Droid，配备有功能完备的浏览器和数千个应用程序的下载链接，这样一来，每月浪费的流量将超过500M。随着iPod等平板电脑以及无线调制解调器呼之欲出，每月下载的数据量将突破1G大关（详见本周商业板头条）。

And this is just the beginning. On the internet, the average latency for corporate websites in America is currently around 350ms, according to the Network Weather Report operated by the University of California, Los Angeles. Google’s latency is 150ms, Facebook’s 285ms and YouTube’s 515ms. Such latencies will have to come down considerably if the next generation of internet applications, such as telepresence, high-definition video streaming and remote surgery, are to fulfil their promise.
这还仅仅是问题的开始。根据洛杉矶加利福尼亚大学的网络情况报告，在因特网上，美国的企业网站目前平均延时约350毫秒，谷歌为150毫秒，facebook为285毫秒，youtube为515毫秒。如果网真技术，高清视频，远程手术等下一代因特网应用真能做到“名符其实”，那么还应该进一步大幅降低这些网络延时。

The future is beckoning. Netflix has just announced an on-demand video-streaming service offering full high-definition picture quality (so-called 1080p, which has 1,080 lines in its picture) with 5.1-channel surround sound. Each stream being watched will require a megabyte a second of bandwidth and a latency of less than 60ms if it is to deliver crisp, pin-sharp video and pristine sound.
未来在向我们招手。Netflix公司最近宣布提供一项按需订制的视频流服务，提供高清画质（即1080p，显像行有1080行 ）和5.1声道环绕声。每个放映的视频流要求带宽1M/s，延时60毫秒以下，才能提供流畅清晰、音质纯正的视频。

For the internet service providers, that means stepping up investment substantially. But adding a lot more routers to the internet would complicate matters hugely and do little to solve the latency problem. If anything, it would actually increase the number of potential bottlenecks.
对因特网服务提供商而言，那意味着增加大量的投资。通过增加路由器的方式只能使网络结构更加复杂，对解决延时问题于事无补。这样做只能增加潜在瓶颈的数量。

A better solution might be to light up more of the “dark fibre” installed during the heady days of the dotcom boom, but left lying unused beneath the streets since the bubble burst nearly a decade ago. That is what a number of securities firms have been quietly doing. When shaving a millisecond off the time needed to execute automated trades can increase revenue by $100m, there is plenty of incentive to build private optical networks with latencies approaching zero.
更好的解决方案或许是，重新利用过去铺设的直驳光纤。近十年前，网络迅速发展，当时铺设了大量的直驳光纤，却一直弃在街道下面无人问津。一些证券公司就在暗中利用这些光纤。执行股票自动交易时每减少一毫秒的延时，公司收入就能增加一亿美元，所以铺设延时近乎零的私人光纤网络，不乏动力。

Indeed, Google said this week that it was not going to hang around waiting for the telecoms industry to build the new optical web. The company is planning a low-latency fibre network that will be capable of delivering speeds of over 100 megabytes a second for communities of 50,000-500,000 people. With luck, other internet service providers everywhere will get the message.
事实上，谷歌这周表示将不再等待电信公司铺设新的光纤网络，而是打算自己铺设低延时的光纤网络，届时能为5万到50万的用户提供超过100M/s的带宽。一切顺利的话，其它的因特网服务提供商都会心领神会的。

译者：czechoslovakia
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