Tablet computing

平板电脑

The book of Jobs

乔布斯书

It has revolutionised one industry after another. Now Apple hopes to transform three at once

苹果已先后发起一项又一项产业革命，现在则希望同时进行三项变革。

Jan 28th 2010
From The Economist print edition

APPLE is regularly voted the most innovative company in the world, but its inventiveness takes a particular form. Rather than developing entirely new product categories, it excels at taking existing, half-baked ideas and showing the rest of the world how to do them properly. Under its mercurial and visionary boss, Steve Jobs, it has already done this three times. In 1984 Apple launched the Macintosh. It was not the first graphical, mouse-driven computer, but it employed these concepts in a useful product. Then, in 2001, came the iPod. It was not the first digital-music player, but it was simple and elegant, and carried digital music into the mainstream. In 2007 Apple went on to launch the iPhone. It was not the first smart-phone, but Apple succeeded where other handset-makers had failed, making mobile internet access and software downloads a mass-market phenomenon.

苹果公司经常被评为全球创新性最强的公司，不过，其创新别具一格。它并不开发全新的产品系列，而是擅长从既有的半成熟想法入手，向全世界展示如何做才恰如其分。该公司总裁史蒂夫·乔布斯头脑灵活，思路开阔，在他主导下，公司已经有三次这么做了。1984年，苹果公司推出麦金塔电脑。这并非首个以鼠标操作并应用图标（注1）的电脑，但却将这些理念应用为有用的产品。然后是2001年，iPod面世。这不是首个数字音乐播放器，但其简洁精巧，将数字音乐引入主流。2007年，苹果再接再厉，推出了iPhone。这不是首款智能手机，但苹果在其他手机生产商失败之处崛起，将移动网络及软件下载培育成大市场。

As rivals rushed to copy Apple’s approach, the computer, music and telecoms industries were transformed. Now Mr Jobs hopes to pull off the same trick for a fourth time. On January 27th he unveiled his company’s latest product, the iPad—a thin, tablet-shaped device with a ten-inch touch-screen which will go on sale in late March for $499-829 (see article). Years in the making, it has been the subject of hysterical online speculation in recent months, verging at times on religious hysteria: sceptics in the blogosphere jokingly call it the Jesus Tablet.

其竞争对手群起仿效苹果成功之路，遂使电脑、音乐与电信产业获得变革。现在，乔布斯冀望第四次再施其妙招，再获成功。1月27日，他展示了公司最新产品iPad－－10英寸触摸屏的薄薄平面产品。该产品将于3月末上市，售价499至829美元（见有关文章）。这款东西研发多年，近几个月来，网上掀起对其猜测的风潮，其热度有时接近对宗教之狂热：博客圈中的无神论者戏谑地称之为平板耶酥。

The enthusiasm of the Apple faithful may be overdone, but Mr Jobs’s record suggests that when he blesses a market, it takes off. And tablet computing promises to transform not just one industry, but three—computing, telecoms and media.

苹果公司追捧者的热情可能有些过火，但乔布斯以往成功表明，他青睐于哪个领域，哪个市场就会火起来。平板电脑笃定将转变不只一个、而是三个行业－－电脑、电信与媒体。

Companies in the first two businesses view the iPad’s arrival with trepidation, for Apple’s history makes it a fearsome competitor. The media industry, by contrast, welcomes it wholeheartedly. Piracy, free content and the dispersal of advertising around the web have made the internet a difficult environment for media companies. They are not much keener on the Kindle, an e-reader made by Amazon, which has driven down book prices and cannot carry advertising. They hope this new device will give them a new lease of life, by encouraging people to read digital versions of books, newspapers and magazines while on the move. True, there are worries that Apple could end up wielding a lot of power in these new markets, as it already does in digital music. But a new market opened up and dominated by Apple is better than a shrinking market, or no market at all.

前两个行业的企业对iPad问世感到恐惶，因为苹果公司的历史证明其是令人生畏的竞争者。与此形成对照的是，媒体业真心实意地对此表示欢迎。盗版猖獗，信息免费和广告网上传播，这使媒体公司在网上发展艰难。亚马逊公司的电子阅读器Kindle拉低了图书价格，又不能投放广告，故媒体公司对此热衷程度有限。它们希望这款新产品可推动人们在移动中阅读数字图书、报纸与杂志，带给他们新生。诚然，有些人担心，这些新市场的主宰权有可能最后被苹果攫取，数字音乐就是现成的例子。但是，苹果开启并主导一个新市场要好过市场萎缩，或根本无市场可言。

Keep taking the tablets

继续瞄准平板电脑

Tablet computers aimed at business people have not worked. Microsoft has been pushing them for years, with little success. Apple itself launched a pen-based tablet computer, the Newton, in 1993, but it was a flop. The Kindle has done reasonably well, and has spawned a host of similar devices with equally silly names, including the Nook, the Skiff and the Que. Meanwhile, Apple’s pocket-sized touch-screen devices, the iPhone and iPod Touch, have taken off as music and video players and hand-held games consoles.

以企业界人士为目标客户的平板电脑行不通。微软多年来致力于此，但鲜获成功。苹果公司也于1993年推出了Newton掌上手写电脑，但惨遭失败。Kindle做得相当好，而且引起一系列类似产品竞相效仿，名字也同样怪，如Nook、Skiff和Que。与此同时，苹果开发了袋装的触摸屏产品iPhone和iPod Touch，它们作为音乐与视频播放器及掌上游戏机大为成功。

The iPad is, in essence, a giant iPhone on steroids. Its large screen will make it an attractive e-reader and video player, but it will also inherit a vast array of games and other software from the iPhone. Apple hopes that many people will also use it instead of a laptop. If the company is right, it could open up a new market for devices that are larger than phones, smaller than laptops, and also double as e-readers, music and video players and games consoles. Different industries are already converging on this market: mobile-phone makers are launching small laptops, known as netbooks, and computer-makers are moving into smart-phones. Newcomers such as Google, which is moving into mobile phones and laptops, and Amazon, with the Kindle, are also entering the fray: Amazon has just announced plans for an iPhone-style “app store” for the Kindle, which will enable it to be more than just an e-reader.

IPad本质上就是膨胀了的大型iPhone。作为电子阅读器与视频播放器而言，其大屏幕更为诱人，而且还带着iPhone的一大堆游戏与其它软件。苹果公司希望许多人能弃笔记本而转用iPad。若果如此，它将开辟一个新产品市场：从体积上看比手机大又比笔记本小，从功能上看能充作电子阅读器、音乐与视频播放器和游戏机。各行业已齐集于这一市场：手机生产商正推出上网本等小型笔记本电脑，电脑生产商进军智能手机领域。还有谷歌与亚马逊等新进者也加入这场混战，如谷歌进入手机与笔记本领域，亚马逊携Kindle而来：刚刚宣布了Kindle关于iPhone式“应用程序商店”的新计划，这将使之功能超出电子阅读器范畴。

If the past is any guide, Apple’s entry into the field will not just unleash fierce competition among device-makers, but also prompt consumers and publishers who had previously been wary of e-books to take the plunge, accelerating the adoption of this nascent technology. Sales of e-readers are expected to reach 12m this year, up from 5m in 2009 and 1m in 2008, according to iSuppli, a market-research firm.

根据以往经验，苹果公司进军该领域不仅仅会引发生产商之间的激烈竞争；消费者与出版商以前对电子阅读器持谨慎态度，不愿进行尝试，苹果的新产品还会加速促使他们接受这一新技术。市场调研公司iSuppli的调查结果显示，电子阅读器的销量在2008年是100万，2009年达到500万，今年将增至1200万。

Hold the front pixels

占据技术领先地位（注2）

Will the spread of tablets save struggling media companies? Sadly not. Some outfits—metropolitan newspapers, for instance—are probably doomed by their reliance on classified advertising, which is migrating to dedicated websites. Others are too far gone already. Tablets are expensive, and it will be some years before they are widespread enough to fulfil their promise. In theory a newspaper could ask its readers to sign up for a two-year electronic subscription, say, and subsidise the cost of a tablet. But such a subsidy would be hugely pricey, and expensive printing presses will have to be kept running for readers who want to stick with paper.

平板电脑的广泛应用会拯救挣扎中的媒体业么？很不幸，不会。有些依赖分类广告的媒体－－如都市类报纸－－可能注定消亡，因为分类广告正转向分门别类的网站。其它一些媒体则早已没落。平板电脑价格昂贵，要扩张到一定规模才能实现其做出的承诺，这尚需时日。从理论上讲，报纸可要求其读者注册，如订阅两年电子刊物，并补贴平板电脑费用。但这样的补贴额将极不菲，而且，平面媒体还不得不继续维持成本高昂的印制发行，以满足那些固守纸质阅读的读者。

Still, even though tablets will not save weak media companies, they are likely to give strong ones a boost. Charging for content, which has proved difficult on the web, may get easier. Already, people are prepared to pay to receive newspapers and magazines (including The Economist) on the Kindle. The iPad, with its colour screen and integration with Apple’s online stores, could make downloading books, newspapers and magazines as easy and popular as downloading music. Most important, it will allow for advertising, on which American magazines, in particular, depend. Tablets could eventually lead to a wholesale switch to digital delivery, which would allow newspapers and book publishers to cut costs by closing down printing presses.

更进一步而言，尽管平板电脑无法拯救弱势媒体，但有可能推动强势媒体发展。在网上根据浏览内容收费原来难以实现，以后将变得更容易。读者已准备付费在Kindle上阅读报纸与杂志（包括经济学家）。IPad拥有彩屏，并与苹果公司的网上商店整合起来，这将使下载书籍、报纸和杂志与下载音乐一样容易与流行起来。最重要的是，这可以引入广告，而美国杂志尤为依赖广告。平板电脑最终可能使数字产品批发放送，这将使报纸与书籍出版商停止印制纸质媒体，以削减费用。

If Mr Jobs manages to pull off another amazing trick with another brilliant device, then the benefits of the digital revolution to media companies with genuinely popular products may soon start to outweigh the costs. But some media companies are dying, and a new gadget will not resurrect them. Even the Jesus Tablet cannot perform miracles.

若乔布斯以另一款非凡产品再显神通，那么，对那些拥有真正受人欢迎产品的媒体而言，这场数字革命带来的益处可能很快超过所付出的代价。但是，一些媒体已在消亡，一种新发明的产品不会令其复活，甚至平板耶酥也创造不了奇迹。

注1：首次将图形界面广泛应用到个人电脑上。
注2：似是短语hold the front page引申出来。

PS 译者忠实翻译原文，旨在交流，并不代表认同文中观点。

译者：龙辰
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=30559&extra=&page=1

The Bihari enlightenment
开化的比哈尔邦
India’s most notorious state is failing to live up to its reputation
臭名不再
Jan 28th 2010 | From The Economist print edition

ONE of the more unlikely case studies offered by Harvard Business School describes the turnaround of Indian Railways under Lalu Prasad Yadav, a shrewd, roguish politician who ruled Bihar, India’s most depressed and unruly state, for 15 years. His predecessor at the railways, Nitish Kumar, now leads Bihar. He may one day draw similar interest from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, for rarely has a failed state escaped political bankruptcy so fast (see article).
哈佛商学院的学习案例之一就是亚达夫手中印度铁路的逆转，这实在是令人跌破眼镜。印度现任铁道部长亚达夫(Lalu Prasad Yadav)是一位狡猾的流氓政客，他曾经治理印度最贫穷，无管制的比哈尔邦15年。而印度前任铁道部长，现在治理着比哈尔邦的尼蒂斯-库马尔（NITISH kumar）有一天可以会同样引起哈佛大学肯尼迪正政治学院的兴趣，因为时至如今象比哈尔邦这样一个失败的邦省能如此之快地逃脱政治破产的命运，实属罕见。

With a population bigger than Germany’s, Bihar still suffers from potholed roads, indolent teachers, apathetic officials, insurgent Maoists, devastating floods, shortages of power, skewed landholdings, caste resentments and an income per head that is only 40% of India’s as a whole. And yet, bad as that may sound, Bihar is far better today than it was in November 2005, when Mr kumar came to power.
比哈尔邦人口比德国多，面临的问题也不少：道路坑坑洼洼，老师懒于教学，官员得过且过。还有叛乱的毛主义分子，滔天的洪水，短缺的电力，歪斜的房屋，种姓制度（注1）引起的仇恨，这些都够比哈尔邦受的了。除此之外，比哈尔邦人均收入只有全印人均收入的40%。这些听起来是糟透了，可是今天的比哈尔邦可比库马尔刚刚接手时的2005年11月要好多了。

Today Bihar has pot-holes, where formerly it didn’t have roads. Businessmen grumble that they cannot raise money to invest in the state, whereas before they spirited their capital out of it. People complain that Mr kumar’s government has fallen short of its ambitious development plans. But at least it has ambitions. Mr Yadav did not offer development. At best, he promised izzat, or self-respect, to downtrodden castes, who once voted as their landlords demanded, and later enjoyed picking someone their “superiors” could not abide.
今天的比哈尔邦道路上有些小洞，可是以前是连路都没有的。商人们嘟囔着说他们筹不到钱到这里投资，然而以前他们只会从该地抽逃资本的。民众抱怨库马尔政府没能实现其雄心勃勃的发展计划，可是至少政府是有抱负的。而亚达夫连个发展计划都没有，他最多只承诺尊重饱受权势压迫的属于种姓制度下层的人民，这些人曾经只是按照主人的意思投票，而后他们也乐于投票给一些“上层人”受不了的候选人。

How has Mr Kumar pulled off this transformation? He first imposed law and order, restoring the state to its role as night-watchman rather than rogue. He has put several gangsters—the sort of people who in the past became heroes—behind bars. He demanded speedy trials, where formerly defendants could intimidate witnesses and drag out proceedings. He has ensured that convicted criminals no longer get lucrative licences for liquor stores and ration shops, which sell subsidised food and fuel. And just as police reformers in America fixed broken windows, Mr kumar’s police improved perceptions of safety by forcing Bihar’s many gun-owners to conceal their weapons, rather than brandishing them out of their cars.
那库马尔是怎样进行他的改革的呢？第一步，他确立了法律和秩序，让该邦重新回归其守夜人(注2)的角色而不再做个恶棍。一些曾经是英雄的的歹徒被他关进牢笼。他也要求加快案件处理速度，因为从前被告通常威胁证人拖延审判进程。此外，他还担保一旦定罪则不能再取得获利行业执照开设酒水商店和出售补助食品和燃料的配给商店。正如美国警察改革者修补破窗一样，库马尔的警察也提升了该地安全系数，他们要求比哈尔邦枪支所有者掩藏武器，而不能像以前一样开车举出武器炫耀。

People now feel confident enough to buy cars and go out after dark. The economy, always volatile, has grown at double-digit rates, on average, since he took power, partly thanks to funds from Delhi. He built over 2,400km of roads last year. In Bihar’s villages, posters advertising immunisation compete with adverts offering cheap mobile-phone calls.
现在，人们对买车和夜间外出都有足够的信心了。一直波动的经济，自库马尔执政以来也以平均两位数的速度增长了，当然还是要感谢来自德里的贷款。 去年比哈尔邦修建了2400公里长的公路，在村落，宣传免疫服务的广告和宣传提供便宜手机电话服务的广告一样随处可见了。

Thanks. Now what?
多谢了，可是现在怎么样呢？
The policies MrKumarhas pursued so far have broad appeal. After the national elections in May 2009, a survey found that 88% of people were at least somewhat satisfied with the state government’s work. His second act will be trickier. He has shied away from land reform, which is both fiendishly complex and deeply unnerving to the upper-caste landowners included in his coalition. And to overcome what one minister describes as a “crisis of implementation”—teachers who don’t teach, nurses who don’t nurse, roads built but not maintained, funds received but not spent—he will have to overcome the most obdurate caste of all: the local bureaucracy.
库马尔实行的这些政策受到了大众的欢迎。2009年5月的全国大选过后，一项调查显示88%的人民都对邦政府的工作至多至少的表示满意。他另一项行动要赢得人们的满意就困难多了。他避开了土地改革。因为对于处于上层种姓的土地所有者（其中包括库马尔联盟中人士），土地改革既招人怨，十分复杂又让改革者身心疲惫。而库马尔必须要克服种姓制度中最顽固的一关，即克服当地官僚阶级的反抗。只有这样，他才能克服一位官员所提的“实施危机”，即克服教师不教，护士不护，道路修好了却没人维护，各种基金筹集好了却花不了种种情况。

More than the floods that frequently test Bihar’s embankments, local officials fear the rising expectations of people who no longer meekly accept their lot in life. Their instinct is to contain the waters by discouraging such self-assertion. But it is only by giving people their say, by turning unmet need into a political demand, that the state apparatus will begin to do its job. Mr Kumar must win re-election before the year is out. The biggest risk to him may be the rising expectations of his constituents. But that is also the measure of his success.
洪水时常检验着比哈尔邦的大堤，当地政府官员担心的是人们已不再仅仅接受命运安排，对生活的期望值越来越高。color=Red]直觉上他们要做的就是堵住洪水，打消人们的这种笃信。但是只有给人民说话的权利，满足他们政治上的要求，政府各机构才算开始其工作。在今年结束前库马尔一定要在再次选举中获胜。现在面临的最大威胁也许是来自选民高涨的期望，但这也许是他获胜的法宝。

注1：种姓制度：印度人口众多，百分之八十二为印度教徒，其中分为不同等级的社会集团。种姓制度主要存在于印度教中，对伊斯兰教和锡克教都有不同程度的影响。
印度的种姓制度将人分为四个不同等级：婆罗门、刹帝利、吠舍和首陀罗。婆罗门即僧侣，为第一种姓，地位最高，从事文化教育和祭祀；刹帝利即武士、王公、贵族等，为第二种姓，从事行政管理和打仗；吠舍即商人，为第三种姓，从事商业贸易；首陀罗即农民，为第四种姓，地位最低，从事农业和各种体力及手工业劳动等。后来随着生产的发展，各种姓又派生出许多等级。除四大种姓外，还有一种被排除在种姓外的人，即“不可接触者”或“贱民”。他们的社会地位最低，最受歧视，绝大部分为农村贫雇农和城市清洁工、苦力等。
种姓制度已经有三千多年的历史，早在原始社会的末期就开始萌芽。后来在阶级分化和奴隶制度形成过程中，原始的社会分工形成等级化和固定化，逐渐形成严格的种姓制度。
种姓是世袭的。几千年来，种姓制度对人们的日常生活和风俗习惯方面影响很深，种族歧视至今仍未消除，尤其广大农村情况还比较严重。
独立后，印度政府采取了很多措施来消除种姓歧视。首先是制定了有关法律规定。1948年国会通过了废除种姓制度的议案。后来宪法和各邦法律也都做出相应规定，保护低级种姓利益。政府还在教育、就业、福利等方面对低级种姓者提供大量帮助。
随着社会的进步，印度的种姓制度也在发生变化。如种姓制度中的内部通婚制受到冲击，如高种姓的女子现在也同低种姓的男子通婚了。人们对职业的看法也有所改变，衡量职业高低不再以宗教思想为基础，而以金钱、权力为基础。在城市里，各种姓人们之间加强了来往与交流。

注2：守夜人：在18世紀有公民權的時候，國家就是一個night watchman，一個夜警，只是在提醒大家不要去侵犯別人，不要去影響別人的宗教信仰自由，不要去影響別人的言論自由，不要去干涉別人的經濟自由。

译者：hellorainylin
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Art.view
艺术.观点

In with the old（注1）
沉醉往昔

A cosmopolitan show of antiques in New York
纽约世界古董展

Jan 27th 2010 | From The Economist online

VISITORS to New York’s Winter Antiques Show, from January 22nd through the 31st, are greeted with what appears to be a large stained-glass window in many shades of purple. Close up, this work is in fact some two-dozen back-lit objects made of amethyst glass, arranged on shelves against a faux window (pictured in slideshow below). They come from Beauport（注2）in Massachusetts, one of 36 houses overseen by Historic New England（注3）, America’s first and largest preservation organisation. To celebrate the group’s centennial, an array of its treasures makes up the feature exhibition of this annual show.
1月22日至31日，参观者来到纽约冬季古董展，一扇巨大的彩色玻璃窗迎面而来，多种紫色，深浅不一。凑近细看，这件作品其实是由24个背景灯映照下的紫水晶玻璃制成，排列在以一扇人造窗户为背景的架子上（图见下方幻灯片）。这些东西来自马萨诸塞州的博波尔（Beauport）[博物馆]，该馆是美国第一个也是最大的[文物]保护组织——“古代新英格兰”（Historic New England）监管的36处房屋之一。为庆祝该组织百年诞辰，其拥有的一批宝物组成了这次年度特展。

Jason J. Weller

The Winter Show is owned by the East Side Settlement House, a social-service organisation that supports local families and community development. Profits from admissions and special events will benefit the organisation’s South Bronx education programme. That the Winter Antiques Show can comfortably bring together such disparate worlds and goals (historic preservation and urban literacy) makes this a true celebration of Americana.
本届冬季展属“东区慈善中心（the East Side Settlement House）”所有，这是一家支持本地家庭及社区发展的社会公益服务性组织。入场费及特别活动产生的收益，将有利于该组织的“南布朗克斯（South Bronx）”教育计划。本届冬季古董展，将根本不在一个领域、目的也不同的历史文物保护与教育促进计划自然地融合在一起, 使之成为了一场真正意义上的美国文物与史料盛会。

The fair is timed to coincide with Americana sales at Christie’s, Sotheby’s and Bonhams. Recent auction results surely gave exhibitors hope. On January 22nd Sotheby’s sold a silver punch-bowl （注4）by Cornelius Kierstede, made in New York in the early 1700s, for a whopping $5.9m. This was more than ten times the low estimate and seven times the previous auction record for American silver.
本届展会正好与克里斯蒂、索斯比与宝龙拍卖行（Christie’s, Sotheby’s and Bonhams）的美国文物销售时间一致。最近的拍卖结果想必给参展者带来了希望。1月22日，索斯比拍卖行以590万美元天价，卖出了一件Cornelius Kierstede于18世纪早期在纽约制作的银质大酒杯。[这一售价]是最低估价的10倍多，也是此前美国银器拍卖纪录的7倍。

At the charity gala preview, around 150 smartly dressed guests queued patiently to be first through the door. (Their spirits were buoyed by the wine and canapés served by attentive staff.) Once inside they pounced. Attendance was up on last year, with more cheque-books in evidence. In the first half-hour Barbara Israel Garden Antiques sold ten pieces of statuary, including a doe and faun group （注5）for $135,000.
慈善晚会预展前，大约150名衣冠楚楚的客人耐心排队，以抢先进门。（工作人员细致周到地端上美酒点心，来宾激情澎湃。）一旦入内，他们就扑向[各处展品]。出席人数较去年有所上涨，支票簿增加即可佐证。“芭芭拉以色列花园古董展”（Barbara Israel Garden Antiques）开展半小时，就卖出了10件雕塑，包括一组母鹿与农牧神[雕像]，售价13.5万美元。

A year ago the show changed its definition of antique, from objects more than 100 years old to those made before 1960. Fortunately this allowed for the appearance this year of an eye-catching, whimsical chandelier from 1920 (pictured above), brought by Frank & Barbara Pollack, Americana dealers from Illinois. The piece consists of three wrought-iron arms, each cut into a silhouette of an elk, with hanging green-glass lights that look like gigantic acorns with “hats” of cast iron. It was love at first site for one visitor, who snapped it up for a five-figure sum soon after the opening.
一年前，该展会更改了其对于古董的定义，以前指超过一百年的物件，现在则指1960年前制造的东西。幸好如此，一件引人注目奇形怪状的1920年产枝形吊灯，今年才得以亮相（上图所示），这件古董是由伊利诺伊州来的美国文物商弗兰克&芭芭拉•波拉克带来的。它包括三只铁臂，每只切割成麋鹿状，[下]悬几个绿色玻璃灯，这些灯看起来就像头戴生铁“帽”的巨型橡果。有个参观者对它一见钟情，开展后不久，便以5位数的总价抢购了。

For all its fame as an American show, this year’s event is a cosmopolitan mix. London dealers include Daniel Katz, whose collection of Renaissance and 18th-century sculptures features a (quite literally) in-your-face gilded and painted stucco plaque of Beethoven’s head ($150,000, featured in slideshow below); and Nicholas Grindley, a private dealer in London and Beijing, who brought Chinese furniture, laquerware and works of art. Mr Grindley says that 30 years ago he bought in the East and sold in the West. Now the situation has reversed: he is buying back from his Western clients and selling in the East. He is making his Winter Show debut in the hopes of attracting new, young Western collectors.
[该展]尽管以美国展览著称，但今年的活动却混合了世界各地的[展品]。伦敦来的一些交易商，包括丹尼尔•卡茨和尼古拉斯•葛第礼。 前者收藏的文艺复兴和18世纪时期的雕塑中，尤以一件镀金并涂满石灰斑的贝多芬头像（售价15万美元，下方幻灯片所示）最为突出，（毫不夸张地说）咄咄逼人; 后者是一位往来于北京和伦敦之间的私人交易商，这次带来了中国家具，漆器和工艺品。葛第礼先生说，30年前，他在东方买进[宝物]而在西方卖出。现在情况逆转了：从西方客户手里回购而在东方售出。他在冬季展上亮相，希望借此吸引一些新的西方年轻藏家。

Hans P. Kraus, junior, a photography dealer based in New York, is exhibiting the work of William Henry Fox Talbot, a pioneering English photographer, with prices that range from $10,000 to $400,000 (depending on an image’s rarity). His stall is further enriched by objects from the archive of Lacock Abbey, the former home of Fox Talbot.
纽约摄影作品交易商小汉斯•P•克劳斯（Hans P. Kraus），展出了英国先锋摄影师威廉•亨利•福克斯•塔尔博特（William Henry Fox Talbot）的作品，（根据图像的稀有性，）其售价范围从1万美元至40万美元[不等]。来自福克斯•塔尔博特故居拉科克修道院（Lacock Abbey）档案库的[大师]作品，进一步丰富了他的展台。

There is a delightful selection of glittering jewellery at this show. Among the glamorous pieces exhibited by A la Vielle Russie, dealers on Fifth Avenue known for their superb Fabergé, is a charming example of sophisticated Americana: a diamond-centred flower brooch with petals of elongated Mississippi River pearls（注6）. Designed in the 1950s, it is priced at $4,800.
本届展会上，还有闪闪发光的珠宝荟萃，赏心悦目。位于第五街，以顶级法贝热（Fabergé）[珠宝]闻名的珠宝商甲•拉•维耶勒•露兹（A la Vielle Russie），展出了款款光彩夺目的饰品，其中一件，堪称美国文物做工精细的迷人典范：中镶钻石的花朵胸针，延伸出嵌有密西西比河珍珠的花瓣。20世纪50年代设计，售价达4800美元。

Sandra Hindman of Les Enluminures (which has offices in Chicago and a gallery in Paris) has brought illuminated manuscripts and early rings. A striking Roman ring, priced at $75,000, has the name of its original owner cut into its wide band. Another “Homonooea” is unlikely to happen by, but there is bound to be more than one woman visiting the Winter Antiques Show for whom the ring’s intaglio of victory would seem appropriate.
Les Enluminures（在芝加哥设有办公室并在巴黎开办了一家画廊），该公司的桑德拉•海得曼（Sandra Hindman）带来了泥金写本与古代指环。这个惊人的罗马指环，售价达7.5万美元，以其原始主人的名字命名，其指箍被切得宽宽的。[在本届展会上，] 未必那么巧有另一位[与这枚指环同名的] “Homonooea”[先生或女士到场买下，成为其新主人]。不过，前来参观这届冬季古董展的女士，肯定有不止一位会觉得这枚刻有凹字“胜利”的指纹，非常适合自己[，想成为其主人]。

译者：zhanyisky

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New fiction 1
新小说 1
The young and the restless
年轻与躁动

Jan 28th 2010
From The Economist print edition

British and American fiction gets off to a promising start in 2010
2010年英美小说开局呈祥

The Unnamed. By Joshua Ferris. Reagan Arthur; 310 pages; $24.99. Viking; £12.99. Buy from Amazon.com
《莫名者》.约书亚·费里斯. 里根亚瑟出版社；310页；24.99美元.海盗图书网；12.99英镑. 从亚马逊网购买

VLADIMIR NABOKOV, who liked to observe other people, once declared that “professional book reviewers are veritable bookmakers”. They gleefully declare who’s in, who’s out, and ask: “Where are the snows of yesteryear?” Hot young novelists, many believe, are meant to follow a predictable script. First, burst onto the scene with some bold, voice-of-the-generation debut—preferably with a comely author photo. Then, years later, deliver to the expectant public a sophomore effort that is, alas, disappointing. Critics favour lamenting squandered promise to praising yet another fine book from someone with unlined skin.

热衷于评点他人作品的弗拉迪米尔·纳博科夫曾经宣称：“只有书评家才算是一本书真正的作者”。他们一边评判着别人的优劣得失，一边问着“去年白雪，如今安在？”乐此不疲。很多人认为，当红的年轻小说家们注定都会蹈循一条老路：起初，他们的一炮走红都是凭借着其富有时代锐气的处女作——往往还配有一张作者靓照；而几年后，他们给期待中的读者交出的第二部作品则往往，唉，让人大失所望。批评家们都眼巴巴地等着将自己的溢美之词送给能够写出第二部好作品的年轻作家。
Not all writers oblige. Occasionally, a well-known name, such as Peter Carey, an Australian, will go through a fallow period only to enjoy a return to form; a rare few, having written a debut of note, then go on to pen an even better second book.

然而并不是所有的作家都极具天赋。一些有名气的作家，比如澳大利亚人彼特·凯里，偶尔也需要过一段清闲时光只为找回良好的状态；很少有人能够在拿出一部为人称道的处女作之后，还能再写出更好的作品来。

Joshua Ferris became an international success in 2007 with “Then We Came to the End”, a smart and breezy satire of office life in an advertising firm. Told in the collective first person, it was a stylish rendering of workplace ambivalence in the wake of the dotcom bust. (“We were delighted to have jobs. We bitched about them constantly.”) It wasn’t perfect, but it was fresh, with pages that turned freely and unpretentiously. At 32, Mr Ferris—gracious, photogenic, based in Brooklyn—was anointed a writer to watch.

约书亚·费里斯于2007年凭借《我们快到头了》一书红遍全球，这是一部轻松明快的喜剧小说，描述一家广告公司的白领办公室生活。全书以第一人称的视角，将互联网泡沫年代人们的矛盾与苦闷进行了精细的刻画。（“我们曾经快乐地工作；我们现在不停地抱怨。”）并非完美无缺，但却新颖别致，情节的起承转合顺畅自然，朴实无华。费里斯——这位优雅、俊俏、现居住于布鲁克林的年轻人——32岁时就已被奉为天才作家。

Readers have not had long to wait for “The Unnamed”, his second novel. Anyone keen on another comedy of manners will be disappointed. So too will those who hoped to write off Mr Ferris as a victim of literary hype.

读者们并没有等待太久，他的第二部小说《莫名者》很快便已问世。以为这又会是一部时尚喜剧小说的人要失望了，同样会失望的还有那些试图把费里斯定性为又一颗文坛流星的批评家们。

From the opening page, he makes it plain that this is a very different book. “It was the cruellest winter. The winds were rabid off the rivers. Ice came down like poisoned darts…They were waiting for him. They didn’t know they were waiting for him.” The novel seizes readers by the lapels with a story that feels serious and mysterious. Tim Farnsworth, a successful Manhattan lawyer in his 40s, returns home one night and declares to his wife, Jane, “It’s back.” What’s back? A strange, unknown disease—one that compels the hero to walk helplessly, incessantly, until he drops from exhaustion. After a reprieve, Tim is once again a victim of his wayward body, “the frightened soul inside the runaway train of mindless matter, peering out from the conductor’s car in horror.”

一开篇，作者就清楚地表明这是一部很不寻常的书。“那是一个酷冷的冬日，寒风从冰河上呼啸而过，飞落的冰碴如同带毒的短箭……他们在等着他，它们不知道他们在等着他。”故事在一种凝重、诡秘的气氛中展开，紧紧抓住了读者的心。40岁的蒂姆·法恩斯沃斯是曼哈顿一名成功的律师，一天晚上他回到家对他的妻子简说：“又来了”。什么又来了？是他身上某种奇怪而未知的疾病——某种迫使主人公不停行走直至力竭而昏厥的疾病，又发作了。在经过了一个短暂的和缓之后，蒂姆又一次成为他那个倔强身躯的受害者，“失控的列车发疯似地向前飞驰，驾驶室里受惊的灵魂惊恐地盯着窗外。”

Tim is otherwise “horse-healthy” and content, a self-assured workaholic, devoted husband and father to a teenage daughter. But in a flash he is uncontrollably off, leaving his wife to find him passed out in a municipal parking place, a hospital or behind some chemist’s shop in the middle of the night. “Was she up for this?” Jane asks herself. These spells last for months at a time, and caring for him is a full-time job. But Jane has no choice: he could die out there. So she reads survivalist manuals, prepares his pack (a first-aid kit, snacks, GPS, a poncho—to carry at all times), and then waits for the call to pick him up. The only alternative is to tie him to the bed and ignore his screams.

蒂姆本来身体很健康，生活也算富足，是一个工作狂，也是一位称职的丈夫和一个未成年女儿的父亲。而他突然间就失去了自我控制，使得他的妻子每于午夜时分在停车场、医院或者药店门口找到已昏厥在地的他。“我该怎么办呢？”简自问道。她丈夫每次发作起来都持续几个月，而照顾他就成了她唯一要做的工作。简没有其他选择：在外面他随时会死。于是她读了生存专家指南，给丈夫准备了防护包（装有急救设备、零食、定位仪，以及随时会用到的雨衣等物），然后等着电话去接他。除此之外，还有一个办法就是把他捆绑到床上，任由他叫喊。

Doctors around the world have no idea what the problem is. Tim, alone in his mutinous body, is left wondering whether the trouble is in his head. Readers wonder about this too. Here Mr Ferris achieves a clever balance: Tim behaves strangely, but isn’t that natural for anyone who loses the life he understood? Isn’t madness inevitable when suffering from something no one can explain? A subplot about a murder trial, which yields a haunting exchange between Tim and a possible suspect on a bridge at night, raises more questions about his mental stability. Yet Jane stops speculating that her husband might be crazy after she goes through the menopause. She could only imagine how infuriating it would be if a doctor insisted her hot flushes were “all in her head”.

全世界的医生都搞不清原因在哪儿；蒂姆，连同他那个不听话的身躯，也不知道自己脑袋到底出了什么状况；读者们同样也不能明白。这里，作者费里斯的小说达到了一种很高明的对比协调：蒂姆的行为十分怪异，然而对于那些对自我失去掌控的人来说，这样的怪异难道不也很正常么？遭受到某种让人无法解释的疾病之后，难道不是必然要走向疯诞？小说中有一个次要情节涉及一起谋杀案，其中蒂姆和杀人疑犯之间有一场夜间发生在桥上的神秘对话，这个情节使得读者对蒂姆的精神状况催生出更多的疑问。然而，后来当简经历了更年期的时候，她便不再去怀疑她丈夫是不是发疯了，因为她已能够想象如果哪个医生非要坚称她的烦躁情绪都是“来自于大脑”，她将会多么的抓狂。

Mr Ferris keeps his prose direct and uncluttered, with only occasional flourishes (Tim’s feet “were like two engorged and squishy hearts”; a diner’s “fluorescent brutality” is “the national colour of insomnia and transience”). His fondness for his characters sometimes veers towards the sentimental. Still, he exercises a mature writer’s restraint, content to leave questions unanswered. He also has a fine ear for speech, and a good sense of what feels real, even when chronicling the surreal.

费里斯保持着他文笔的直率和简洁，但偶尔也会有几处花里胡哨的句子（蒂姆的双脚“就像两颗憋闷而潮湿的心”；那位就餐者的“闪着荧光的粗暴”就像“失眠症一样是一种民族特色”）。他对那位主人公的偏爱有时也稍显矫情。但他依然有着成熟作家的节制，比如在小说中设置疑惑而又并不作答。他对言说有着极高的领悟力，而且对现实世界时刻保持着敏锐，即便他是在编写超现实主义的小说。

Mr Ferris insists that “The Unnamed” is not a work of magical realism, but of “realist magic”. By inventing an incurable disease, he can meditate on its impact—on a marriage, on a career, on a character’s self-esteem—without dragging in the baggage of a familiar illness. This also amplifies the horror, leaving readers just as perplexed about what is afflicting Tim. Is this a physical or mental problem? Can a line be drawn between the two? In the last third of the book, Tim gives himself over to his need to walk. Raving and deteriorating, he lets his legs take him across the country, living a hobo’s life without possessions or attachments (“To own something was to keep it on his back or risk losing it forever”). Yet Tim’s dilemmas still feel real and his needs sympathetic. How does he go on? How does anyone?

费里斯一再说到，《莫名者》的风格不是魔幻现实主义，而是现实主义魔幻。通过发明一种不可治愈的疾病——不是牵强地通过一种常见的病——他才能够对受到这种疾病冲击的婚姻、职业以及主人公的自尊进行一番沉思。而这样做也能放大那种恐惧感，使得读者对发生在主人公身上的事情感到莫名的惊恐与不解，读者会问，问题到底是出在生理上呢还是心理上？作者能不能再多一些着墨描写呢？在本书的最后三分之一，蒂姆完全放任了自己的行走欲望。狂乱疯癫，每况愈下，蒂姆任由自己的双腿带着他游走于天南海北，过着无依无靠的浪人生活（“拥有某物就要一直把它背在肩上，否则就会永远地失去”）然而蒂姆的苦难又是那么的真切，那么的让人同情。他如何继续下去？我们每个人又如何继续下去？

This is a story about a man with a walking problem, but it is also a larger tale about struggling with uncertainty. Scattered throughout the novel are some odd events: blizzards, floods, fires, dying bees. Mr Ferris is reminding us of how little we know about the world we live in, and how little we know about ourselves within it, and yet we persist. This is not to say that Tim’s walking is some clunky metaphor. Mr Ferris is wise enough not to teach a lesson. Rather, he has teased ordinary circumstances into something extraordinary, which is exactly what we want our fiction writers to do.

这是一个关于患有行走强迫症的人的故事，而它也同样是一部与不确定性进行抗争的史诗。小说中处处充满着古怪的意象：暴风雪、洪水、火灾、垂死的蜜蜂等等。作者费里斯在提醒我们，对于我们生活在其中的这个世界以及我们自己，我们都还了解得太少，但我们却仍在安于现状。这并不是说，蒂姆的行走是某种笨拙的隐喻。费里斯先生很明智，他没有在小说里进行说教，而是通过戏谑的方式将人生中的寻常境况变得不同寻常，而这正是我们希望小说家们都去做的。

译者：eco彬彬
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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。