翻译题 There is an old saying that philosophy bakes no bread. It is perhaps equally true that no bread would ever have been baked without philosophy. For the act of baking implies a decision on the philosophical issue of whether life is worthwhile at all. Bakers may not have often asked themselves the question in so many words. 46 But philosophy traditionally has been nothing less than the attempt to ask and answer, in a formal and disciplined way, the great questions of life that ordinary men might put to themselves in reflective moments. In a world of war and change, of principles armed with bombs and technology searching for principles, the alarming thing is not what philosophers say but what they fail to say. 47 When reason is overturned, blind passions are unrestrained, and urgent questions mount, men turn for guidance to scientists, sociologists, politicians, journalists—almost anyone except their traditional guide, the philosopher. Ironically, the once remote theologians are in closer touch with humanity's immediate and intense concerns than most philosophers. Many feel that the 'queen of sciences' has been dethroned. Once all sciences were part of philosophy's domain, but gradually, from physics to psychology, they seceded and established themselves as independent disciplines. Above all, for some time now, philosophy itself has been engaged in a vast revolt against its own past and against its traditional function. 48 This intellectual clearance may well have been necessary, but as a result contemporary philosophy looks inward at its own problems rather than outward at men, and philosophizes about philosophy, not about life. A great many of his colleagues in the U.S. today would agree with Donald Kalish, chairman of the philosophy department at U.C.L.A., who says: 'There is no system of philosophy to spin out. There are no ethical truths, there are just clarifications of particular ethical problems. You are mistaken to think that anyone ever had the answers. There are no answers.' 49 As a result, philosophy today is bitterly separated, and most of the major philosophy departments and scholarly journals are the exclusive property of one sect or another. 50 Chances are, however, that philosophy will learn to coexist with science and reach is delayed maturity, provided it resolutely insists on being a separate discipline dealing publicly and intelligibly in first-order questions. Caution is bound to remain. Instead of one-man systems, philosophy in the future will probably consist of a dialogue of many thinkers, each seeking to explore to the fullest one aspect of a common problem.

翻译题It is hard to predict how science is going to turn out, and if it is really good science it is impossible to predict. If the things to be found are actually new, they are by definition unknown in advance. You cannot make choices in this matter. 46 You either have science or you don't, and if you have it you are obliged to accept the surprising and disturbing pieces of information, along with the neat and promptly useful bits. The only solid piece of scientific truth about which I feel totally confident is that we are profoundly ignorant about nature. Indeed, I regard this as the major discovery of the past hundred years of biology. It is, in its way, an illuminating piece of news. 47 It would have amazed the brightest minds of the 18th century Enlightenment to be told by any of us how little we know and how bewildering the wag ahead seems. 48 It is this sudden confrontation with the depth and scope of ignorance that represents the most significant contribution of the 20th century science to the human intellect. In earlier times, we either pretended to understand how things worked or ignored the problem, or simply made up stories to fill the gaps. Now that we have begun exploring in earnest, we are getting glimpses of how huge the questions are, and how far from being answered. Because of this, we are depressed. 49 It is not so bad being ignorant if you are totally ignorant; the hard thing is knowing in some detail the reality of ignorance, the worst spots and here and there the not-so-bad spots, but no true light at the end of the tunnel nor even any tunnels that can yet be trusted. But we are making a beginning and there ought to be some satisfaction. There are probably no questions we can think up that can't be answered, sooner or later, including even the matter of consciousness. 50 To be sure, there may well be questions we can't think up, ever, and therefore limits to the reach of human intellect, but that is another matter. Within our limits, we should be able to work our way through to all our answers if we keep at it long enough, and pay attention.

翻译题Fifteen years ago, I was a physicist hard at work hunting for a theory of nature that would unify the very big and the very small. There was good reason to hope. The great and the good were committed. 46 Even Einstein, who recognized that our understanding of reality is necessarily incomplete, had spent the last 20 years of his life searching for a unified field theory that would describe the two main forces we see acting around us—gravity and electromagnetism—as manifestations of a single force. For him, such a mathematical theory represented the purest and most elegant expression of nature and the highest achievement of the human intellect. 47 Modern critics say that Einstein and other giants of 20th-century physics failed because their models didn't include all particles of matter and their fundamental interactions. But are we really getting any closer? Do we dare ask whether the search is fundamentally misguided? 48 Could belief in a physical theory that unifies the secrets of the material world—a 'hidden code' of nature—be the scientific equivalent of the religious belief in oneness held by the billions who go to churches every day? 49 Even before what we now call physics existed, ancient Greek philosophers pondered whether the diversity of nature could radiate from a single source, a primal (原始的) substance. Pythagoras and his followers believed that nature was a mathematical puzzle, constructed through ratios and patterns that combine integers, and that geometry was the key to deciphering it. The idea of mathematics as a fundamental gateway to nature's secrets re-emerged during the late Renaissance. 50 Galileo Galilei (伽利略) made it clear that the mathematical description of nature succeeds only through the painstaking application of the scientific method, where hypotheses are tested by experiments and observations and then accepted or rejected.

翻译题Green space facilities are contributing to an important extent to the quality of the urban environment. Fortunately it is no longer necessary that every lecture or every book about this subject has to start with the proof of this idea. 46 At present it is generally accepted, although more as a self-evident statement than on the basis of a closely-reasoned scientific proof. The recognition of the importance of green space in the urban environment is a first step on the right way. 47 This does not mean, however, that sufficient details are known about the functions of green space in towns and about the way in which the inhabitants are using these spaces. As to this rather complex subject I shall, within the scope of this lecture, enter into one aspect only, namely the recreative function of green space facilities. 48 The theoretical separation of living, working, traffic and recreation which for many years has been used in town-and-country planning, has in my opinion resulted in disproportionate attention for forms of recreation far from home, whereas there was relatively little attention for improvement of recreative possibilities in the direct neighborhood of the home. 49 We have come to the conclusion that this is not right, because an important part of the time which we do not pass in sleeping or working, is used for activities at and around home. So it is obvious that recreation in the open air has to begin at the street door of the house. 50 The urban environment has to offer as many recreation activities as possible, and the design of these has to be such that more obligatory activities can also have a recreative _aspect. The very best standard of living is nothing if it is not possible to take a pleasant walk in the district, if the children cannot be allowed to play in the streets, because the risks of traffic are too great, if during shopping you can nowhere find a spot for enjoying for a moment the nice weather, in short, if you only feel yourself at home after the street-door of your house is closed after you.

翻译题 When older people can no longer remember names at a cocktail party, they tend to think that their brainpower is declining. But a growing number of studies suggest that this assumption is often wrong. 46 Instead, the research finds, the aging brain is simply taking in more data and trying to sift through a clutter of information, often to its long-term benefit. The studies are analyzed in a new edition of a neurology book, Progress in Brain Research. Some brains do deteriorate with age. Alzheimer's disease, for example, strikes 13 percent of Americans 65 and older. 47 But for most aging adults, the authors say, much of what occurs is a gradually widening focus of attention that makes it more difficult to latch onto just one fact, like a name or a telephone number. Although that can be frustrating, it is often useful. 'It may be that distractibility is not, in fact, a bad thing,' said Shelley H. Carson, a psychology researcher at Harvard whose work was cited in the book. 'It may increase the amount of information available to the conscious mind.' For example, in studies where subjects are asked to read passages that are interrupted with unexpected words or phrases, adults who are 60 and older work much more slowly than college students. 48 Although the students plow through the texts at a consistent speed regardless of what the out-of-place words mean older people slow down even more when the words are related to the topic at hand. That indicates that they are not just stumbling over the extra information, but are taking it in and processing it. 49 When both groups were later asked questions for which the out-of-place words might be answers, the older adults responded much better than the students. 'For the young people, it's as if the distraction never happened,' said an author of the review, Lynn Hasher, a professor of psychology at the University of Toronto and a senior scientist at the Rotman Research Institute. 'But for older adults, because they've retained all this extra data they're now suddenly the better problem solvers. They can transfer the information they've soaked up from one situation to another.' 50 Such tendencies can yield big advantages in the real world where it is not always clear what information is important, or will become important. A seemingly irrelevant point or suggestion in a memo can take on new meaning if the original plan changes. Or extra details that stole your attention, like others, yawning and fidgeting, may help you assess the speaker's real impact.

翻译题 One of the hallmarks of our anxieties about the future is confusion over how to prepare young people for it. What is it that we are supposed to be educating students for? 46 We know that today's young people will, during their lifetimes, face multiple changes in jobs, and we assume that their future will be shaped by technologies that we cannot yet imagine. But when we try to translate these observations into what elementary and secondary schools should be doing, the result is usually a rehash of tired old complaints. If we are ever to break out of this cycle, we are going to need some very big ideas. Egan, a professor of education at Simon Fraser University, recognizes the temptation to place blame for schools' failures on incompetent teachers and simple-minded politicians, but he wants a deeper and more useful explanation. 47 The key to obtaining such an explanation lies in addressing the problematic yet unchallenged assumptions that trap today's debate in an endless cycle of frustration. Drawing on evolutionary psychology and cognitive science, Egan outlines three widely accepted schools of thought about the goals of education. The first takes education to be a matter of socializing humans into the membership of nations and other collectives. 48 'Governments are in the business of schooling' for this reason, but socialization is pursued at a cost because 'making requirements uniform will always be at odds with the ambitions of our imaginations.' Indeed, if the goal of socialization is pursued too assiduously, we call it indoctrination-at least when others do it. With the emergence of literacy in human history came a second big goal for education: Plato's academic ideal. 49 Mastering the new forms of coded knowledge that came with literacy has become the purpose of much of contempoary education and, for better or for worse, underlies much of the testing that now shapes it. The third is the 'developmental' idea, through which education is viewed as 'supporting the fullest achievement of the natural process of mental development.' Like the blind men who encounter an elephant, these ideas bring limited perspectives to the discussion. Worse yet, they bring views that often stand in direct contradiction to one another. 50 As he puts it: 'There is no mind in the brain until the brain interacts with the external symbolic stone of culture, ' and in such interaction, the possibilities for innovation live as well.

翻译题Take a cell, practically any cell, from your body, and through appropriate biological repairing, you can cause it to grow into a duplicate of yourself—identical from eyelashes to toenails. With this system, you can neatly reproduce yourself without any partner. Human cloning, it's called. Is this science fact or science fiction? 46 In the spring of 1996, a book was published telling the supposedly true story of an elderly millionaire who, at great expense, succeeded in producing a clone—an exact genetic copy of himself. According to the account, the cloned child, now 4 years old, is living with his father in California. The book caused a small uproar. Clone movies and clone jokes sprang up overnight. 47 A group of scientists demanded that the federal government reveal all the studies it has funded on cloning and related field of cell biology. But some distinguished biologists offered their opinion that the book was pure fantasy. They pointed out that cell researchers simply do not yet know enough to pull off such a feat, even if they are anxious to. Yet the cloning story touches a highly sensitive nerve. People began to realize that we are on the threshold of a new age in the biosciences. Knowledge of genetic engineering is emerging that allows scientists to tinker with, and change, the very stuff of life. 48 The assumption on which human cloning tests is that all genetic ceils, though now specialized, still contain exact copies of the original set of genetic instructions needed to make an entire individual and could do so if a way is found to switch them back on. If so, the recipe for cloning people should be quite simple, at least in theory. Although it may look simple on paper, it isn't in practice. To date scientists have succeeded in cloning some small animals. But it is still a far cry from the much more complicated experiment on the carbon copy of human beings. Even when technically possible, the potential of human cloning challenges our entire value system. We must talk about the implications now, before any crisis occurs. What would happen if human cloning became a reality? One favorite expectation is the creation of a new breed of Einstein's. But scientists quickly denied the possibility. It is more than genetic make-up that makes an individual. 49 People are all products of a particular historical time and of special environment, with so many minute things affecting the way they develop each and every day. A duplicate background—and therefore a duplicate individual—could never be created. Fortunately, cloning research is not a technique for reproductive purposes, but to cure human diseases. 50 Already biologists studying the cell's inner workings and the various methods of cloning have made exciting discoveries that may finally lead to breakthroughs in fighting against cancer. It may also be used to control the aging process, and conquer presently incurable human genetic diseases.

翻译题ThegrowthoftheuseofEnglishastheworldsprimarylanguageforinternationalcommunicationhasobviouslybeencontinuingforseveraldecades(46)ButevenasthenumberofEnglishspeakersexpandsfurthertherearesingsthattheglobalpredominanceofthelanguagemayfadewithintheforeseeablefuture.　　Complexinternational,economic,technologicalandculturalchangescouldstarttodiminishtheleadingpositionofEnglishasthelanguageoftheworldmarket,andUKinterestswhichenjoyadvantagefromthebeadthofEnglishusagewouldconsequentlyfacefewpressures.ThoserealisticpossibilitiesarehighlightedinthestudypresentedbyDavidGraddol.　　(47)Hisanalysisshouldthereforeendanyself-contendednessamongthosewhomaybelievethattheglobalpositionofEnglishissostablethatthevounsgenerationsoftheUnitedKingdomdonotneedadditionallanguagecapabilities.　　DavidGraddolconcludesthatmonoglotEnglishgraduatesfaceableakeconomicfutureasqualifiedmultilingualyoungstersfromothercountriesareprovingtohaveacompetitiveadvantageovertheirBritishcounterpartsinglobalcompaniesandorganizationsalongsidethat(48)manycountriesareintroducingEnglishintotheprimary-schoolcurriculumbutBritishschoolchildrenandstudentsdonotappeartobegaininggreaterencouragementtoachievefluencyinotherlanguages.Iflefttothemselves,suchtrendswilldiminishtherelativestrengthoftheEnglishlanguageininternationaleducationmarketsasthedemandforeducationalresourcesinlanguages,suchasSpanish,ArabicorMandaringrowsandinternationalbusinessprocessoutsourcinginotherlanguagessuchasJapanese,FrenchandGerman,spreads.　　(49)ThechangesidentifiedbyDavidGraddolallpresentclearandmajorchallengestotheUK:sprovidersofEnglishlanguageteachingtopeopleofothercountriesandtobroadereducationbusinesssectors.TheEnglishlanguageteachingsectordirectlyearnsnearly￡1.3billionfortheUKininvisibleexportsandourothereducationrelatedexportsearnupto￡10billionayearmore.Astheinternationaleducationmarketexpands,therecentslowdowninthenumbersofinternationalstudentsstudyinginthemainEnglish-speakingcountriesislikelytocontinue,especiallyiftherearenoeffectivestrategicpoliciestopreventsuchslippage.Clearly,theeffectofdevelopmentsinthatdirectionwouldnotbelimitedtothecommercialandeducationalsectors.Culturalandcivilcontactsandunderstandingwouldalsobediluted.　　Theanticipationofpossibleshiftsindemandprovidedbythisstudyissignificant:(50)ItgivesabasistoallorganizationswhichseektopromotethelearninganduseofEnglish,abasisforplanningtomeetthepossibilitiesofwhatcouldbeaverydifferentoperatingenvironment.Thatisanecessaryandpracticalapproach.Inthiscaseinmuchelse,thosewhowishtoinfluencethefuture.

翻译题Exactly where we will stand in the long war against disease by the year 2050 is impossible to say. 46 But if developments in research maintain their current pace, it seems likely that a combination of improved attention to dietary and environmental factors, along with advances in gene therapy and protein targeted drugs, will have virtually eliminated most major classes of disease. From an economic standpoint, the best news may be that these accomplishments could be accompanied by a drop in health-care costs. 47 Costs may even fall as diseases are brought under control using pinpointed, short term therapies now being developed. By 2050 there will be fewer hospitals, and surgical procedures will be largely restricted to the treatment of accidents and other forms of trauma. Spending on nonacute care, both in nursing facilities and in homes, will also fall sharply as more elderly people lead healthy lives until close to death. One result of medicine's success in controlling disease will be a dramatic increase in life expectancy. 48 The extent of that increase is a highly speculative matter, but it is worth noting that medical science has already helped to make the very old ( currently defined as those over 85 years of age) the fastest growing segment of the population. Between 1960 and 1995, the U.S. population as a whole increased by about 45%, while the segment over 85 years of age grew by almost 300%. 49 There has been a similar explosion in the population of centenarians, with the result that survival to the age of 100 is no longer the newsworthy feat that it was only a few decades ago. U.S. Census Bureau projections already forecast dramatic increase in the number of centenarians in the next 50 years: 4 million in 2050, compared with 37,000 in 1990. 50 Although Census Bureau calculations project an increase in average life span of only eight years by the year 2050, some experts believe that the human life span should not begin to encounter any theoretical natural limits before 120 years. With continuing advances in molecular medicine and a growing understanding of the aging process, that limit could rise to 130 years or more.

翻译题You come into the world with nothing, the saying goes. A new campaign proposes to change that by giving every newborn child in the world an online bank account with $100 in it. The aim of the Financial Access@ Birth (FAB) campaign is to do something about the fact that half the world's population has no access to mainstream financial services. 46 This is a huge handicap, exposing people who are typically already on the poverty line to risks that wealthier folk can manage through savings or insurance, and leaving them to be blackmailed by unregistered moneylenders. The campaign is the brainchild of Bhagwan Chowdhry, a finance professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, and is starting to attract some prominent supporters, including Peter Singer, a well-known philosopher, and Vijay Mahajan, an Indian social entrepreneur. 47 FAB fits perfectly together with another big idea: an effort being led by Nandan Nilekani, an outsourcing tycoon turned government minister, to provide every Indian with a legal proof of identity in the form of an electronic smart card. 48 The prospect of a bank account with $100 in it—this initial amount would be untouchable until the child's 16th birthday—would encourage parents to register their newborn babies. The account could then be used by governments or charities to make direct payments, to fund things like the child's education or health care. Opening accounts for babies has been tried before, but only in rich countries such as Britain, Canada and South Korea, where its potential impact is far smaller. 49 Mr. Chowdhury expects the parents of the richest 35m children born each year voluntarily to give up the free money, which would leave accounts for the other 100m newborns born each year to be funded. The campaign proposes that national governments each donate one-fiftieth of one percent of GDP to cover the estimated $10 billion annual cost. That is still a tough deception in today's economic climate: 50 one issue to be thoroughly discussed is whether the accounts have to be funded at birth, or whether the money needs to arrive only when the child turns 16. But governments are not the only potential donors. The idea sounds perfect for banks, which would gain a potentially lucrative army of future customers and could polish up their battered images at the same time.

翻译题Musicmeansdifferentthingstodifferentpeopleandsometimesevendifferentthingstothesamepersonatdifferentmomentsofhislife.Itmightbepoetic,philosophical,sensual,ormathematical,butinanycaseitmust,inmyview,havesomethingtodowiththesoulofthehumanbeing.Henceitismetaphysical;butthemeansofexpressionispurelyandexclusivelyphysical:sound.Ibelieveitispreciselythispermanentcoexistenceofmetaphysicalmessagethroughphysicalmeansthatisthestrengthofmusic.46)Itisalsothereasonwhywhenwetrytodescribemusicwithwords,allwecandoisarticulateourreactionstoit,andnotgraspmusicitself.Beethoven’simportanceinmusichasbeenprincipallydefinedbytherevolutionarynatureofhiscompositions.Hefreedmusicfromhithertoprevailingconventionsofharmonyandstructure.SometimesIfeelinhislateworksawilltobreakallsignsofcontinuity.Themusicisabruptandseeminglydisconnected,asinthelastpianosonata.Inmusicalexpression,hedidnotfeelrestrainedbytheweightofconvention.47)Byallaccountshewasafreethinkingperson,andacourageousone,andIfindcourageanessentialqualityfortheunderstanding,letalonetheperformance,ofhisworks.ThiscourageousattitudeinfactbecomesarequirementfortheperformersofBeethoven’smusic.Hiscompositionsdemandtheperformertoshowcourage,forexampleintheuseofdynamics.48)Beethoven’shabitofincreasingthevolumewithanextremeintensityandthenabruptlyfollowingitwithasuddensoftpassagewasonlyrarelyusedbycomposersbeforehim.Beethovenwasadeeplypoliticalmaninthebroadestsenseoftheword.Hewasnotinterestedindailypolitics,butconcernedwithquestionsofmoralbehaviorandthelargerquestionsofrightandwrongaffectingtheentiresociety.49)Especiallysignificantwashisviewoffreedom,which,forhim,wasassociatedwiththerightsandresponsibilitiesoftheindividual:headvocatedfreedomofthoughtandofpersonalexpression.Beethoven’smusictendstomovefromchaostoorderasiforderwereanimperativeofhumanexistence.Forhim,orderdoesnotresultfromforgettingorignoringthedisordersthatplagueourexistence;orderisanecessarydevelopment,animprovementthatmayleadtotheGreekidealofspiritualelevation.ItisnotbychancethattheFuneralMarchisnotthelastmovementoftheEroicaSymphony,butthesecond,sothatsufferingdoesnothavethelastword.50)OnecouldinterpretmuchoftheworkofBeethovenbysayingthatsufferingisinevitable,butthecouragetofightitrenderslifeworthliving.

翻译题Often referred to as 'the heart of a factoring organization,' the credit department is responsible for granting credit to clients' customers and for collecting the accounts receivable purchased through the factor. 46 When factored clients submit customer orders for credit approval, the credit department analyzes the financial condition and credit worthiness of the customer, then makes a decision to approve or decline the order. The department must then monitor the condition of approved customers and collect all due receivables. Careful credit checking and effective collection procedures in this department can greatly reduce the risks inherent in factoring. As the head of the credit department, the credit manager is responsible for seeing that the department operates effectively. 47 He must develop the factor's credit policies in consultation with senior factoring associates, and he is in overall command of everything from credit and collections to bankruptcy and liquidations. If only the factor is a commercial bank division, the credit manager is a bank vice president, and credit policy must also be approved through top management of the bank. 48 Assisting the credit manager may be several supervisors who have credit responsibilities of their own and who also oversee the analysis and approval of customer orders through the credit specialists. Credit supervisors typically spend about eighty percent of their time handling large customer orders. If only a customer order exceeds a supervisor's credit authority, he is responsible for making recommendations to the credit manager. A supervisor also reviews a subordinate's credit decision if only the subordinate is unsure of the extent of the credit risk or if only a client questions a particular credit decision. In extremely large credit exposures, supervisor's bear the responsibility for analyzing the credit position of the customers and deciding on credit limits. To do this, they must regularly obtain current data from various credit information sources. They must also have extensive contact with each customer to determine operational performance and progress. Frequently, supervisors are called upon to give advice on what should be done to improve a company's financial condition. 49 Meeting all these responsibilities requires that each supervisor continuously observe and study the industries with which he is concerned, so that he is capable of anticipating market changes which may affect his accounts. 50 A supervisor's major challenge is to maintain a free balance between the demands of clients that all their customer orders be approved and the questionable financial position of some of the customers. In reviewing any credit decision, a supervisor must be capable of weighing a variety of elements, including the possibility of losing the client, the customer's credit position, and the extent of any possible loss.

翻译题Choice is a fundamental American value that often lies at the center of heated political discussions. However, recent research suggests that thinking about our lives in terms of choices may reduce our support for public policies that promote greater equality in society. By emphasizing free will over the situational factors that shape people's life experiences, thinking about choice may lead us to view inequality as less bothersome. For example, thinking about choices may lead us to feel less concerned about the growing gap between the wealthy and the poor. The persons who had thought about their actions in terms of choices were less likely to feel alarmed. 46 Choice may lead us to focus on how people's freely chosen actions lead to either poverty or wealth, making wealth inequality seem like a reasonable result rather than a public problem that needs to be solved. 47 Although political orientation is related to the degree to which people support policies designed to promote equality, the idea of choice influenced the opinions of both liberals and conservatives. In an experiment, participants were asked to watch a short video of a person doing mundane activities in an apartment, such as opening mail or reading a magazine. Some participants were asked to press a button whenever they saw the person in the video touch an object. Other participants were asked to press the button whenever they perceived that the person in the video was making a choice. 48 Later all participants were asked to read about public policies designed to redistribute educational resources in a community in order to make things more equal between the wealthy and the poor. Those who had been prompted to think about choices, regardless of their own political leanings, expressed less support for the equalizing policies. The results from these studies may have something to do with how closely Americans associate choice with freedom. When Americans are made to think about choice, they may shift their attitudes in favor of policies that promote individual freedom rather than restrict it. 49 In 2011 Savani and his colleagues published a set of studies demonstrating that thinking about choice decreases people's support for laws that limit individual freedoms, such as banning violent video games or levying environmental taxes on fuel-inefficient cars. Thinking about choice also led people to feel more positively towards laws that uphold individual freedoms, such as laws legalizing marijuana. Unfortunately, they found that thinking about choice also has a downside. For example, 50 participants who had thought about choices, were more liken to blame people who had experienced car accidents, physical abuse, or a loss of their home due to a building collapse.

翻译题A senior executive of a large consumer goods company had spotted a bold partnership opportunity in an important developing market and wanted to pull the trigger quickly to stay ahead of competitors. 46 In meetings on the topic with the leadership team, the CEO noted that this trusted colleague was animated, adamant, and very persuasive about the move's game-changing_potential for the company, and the facts he had provided were solid. The CEO also observed something troubling, however, his colleague wasn't listening. 47 During conversations about the pros and cons of the deal and its strategic rationale, for example, the senior executive wasn't open to avenues of conversation that challenged the move or entertained other possibilities. What's more, the tenor of these conversations appeared to make some colleagues uncomfortable. The senior executive's poor listening skills were short-circuiting what should have been a healthy strategic debate. 48 Eventually, the CEO was able to use a combination of diplomacy, tactful private conversation, and the bureaucratic rigor of the company's strategic-planning processes to convince the executive of the need to listen more closely to his peers and engage with them more productively about the proposal. The resulting conversations determined that the original deal was sound but that a much better one was available—a partnership in the same country. The new partnership presented slightly less risk to the company than the original deal but had an upside potential exceeding it by a factor of ten. The situation facing the CEO will be familiar to many senior executives. Listening is the front end of decision making. 49 It's the surest, most efficient route to informing the judgments we need to make, yet many of us have heard, at one point or other in our careers, that we could be better listeners. Indeed, many executives take listening skills for granted and focus instead on learning how to articulate and present their own views more effectively. This approach is misguided. 50 Good listening—the active and disciplined activity of probing and challenging the information got from others to improve its quality and quantity—is the key to building a base of knowledge that generates fresh insights and ideas. Put more strongly, good listening, in my experience, can often mean the difference between success and failure in business ventures (and hence between a longer career and a shorter one). Listening is a valuable skill that most executives spend little time cultivating.

翻译题 46 Technology has made it easy to cross national frontiers physically, but there has been no invention of new mental habits to enable people to cope with foreigners in a new way. For that to happen, the habits of tourists will have to alter. The hidden god of travel is still Karl Baedeker, even though he died in 1859. His guidebooks have a permanent pattern, making travel essentially a matter of sightseeing, looking at places rather than at people. 47 His achievement was to find sights that could be guaranteed to be there all the time, to be clearly identifiable, dated and classified according to the amount of admiration they deserved. He made visits to old monuments and to art museums--the staple diet of the traveler, drawing attention away from the living inhabitants. To this day, tourism is a course in history, architecture, aesthetics, and the appreciation of hotels and food. 48 The cult of 'sights' has grown so much that most foreign (organized) travel involves virtually no contact with the natives, beyond those who specialize in catering for tourists. The business traveler tends to meet mainly people in his own profession. How different from the itinerary of a modern package holiday is this program, drawn up by an Englishman, Sir Francis Head, in 1852, before the guide books told tourists what to do. In Paris, he visited the municipal pawnshop, the asylum for blind youths, where Braille, still unknown in England, was being used, a prison, an orphanage for abandoned children, the Salpetriere old people's home, the morgue, the national printing works, the military academy, the national assembly, the public laundry, and finally he attended/he lectures at the Conservatory for Arts and Crafts. The rise of bureaucratic officialdom soon stopped that kind of curiosity; but perhaps today a new openness will allow it to express itself again. In former times, the attraction of foreign travel was often that people did abroad what they dared not do at home, which is shy foreign countries won reputations for sexual debauchery. (The French considered England as debauched as the English visitors to the Folies Bergeres imagined the French to be. ) 49 But now that a visit to France is no longer a dangerous adventure, and that an international uniformity exists in so many of the goods and facilities the tourist encounters, where is the excitement, and where are the new discoveries? It is to be found in the people. 50 The foreignness in foreign travel today must come mainly from meeting individuals whom one would not normally meet at home.

翻译题An Internet privacy bill introduced by Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto would prohibit discriminatory data practices. That is a good goal. But which practices qualify as discriminatory is a complicated question. Privacy activists have long stressed that data over-collection and misuse cause disproportionate harm to minority groups. Often, that harm is prohibited by existing civil rights rules. But those rules were put into place before anyone could have imagined an age of digital discrimination, and companies are circumventing them. Take targeted advertising. 46 Leaders in the industry make money by allowing advertisers to select the very specific segments of the population they think are most likely to want their products, or by selecting the segments themselves. Sometimes, those categories are the same classes of people that civil rights law exists to protect, such as minorities and women. 47 That can lead to forms of marketing that are not insidious at all: say, promoting women's shoes exclusively to potential customers who have displayed an online interest in women's fashion. It can also lead to obvious abuses, such as companies displaying housing ads only to mainstream individuals, whether by explicitly excluding minorities or engaging in digital redlining via Zip code restrictions. An expanse of gray lies in between. 48 Regulators will have to decide whether to limit anti-discrimination rules to areas where there are traditionally heightened protections or whether—and how—to push beyond those frameworks. Lawmakers will also have to look at data-based discrimination that is not designed to have an adverse impact on protected groups but does anyway. 49 An algorithm that adjusts an ad's audience to maximize engagement could end up showing a job posting only to men if men click on it most frequently—which could occur for a profession historically unfriendly to women. There's an added wrinkle. Sometimes, targeting sensitive advertisements based on protected characteristics can actually promote equity. Directing education opportunities to an underserved community is a kind of advertising affirmative action that regulators should take care not to prohibit. Whatever Congress decides—Ms. Cortez Masto's bill would leave the particulars to the Federal Trade Commission—any law should require that companies of a certain size study how their algorithms do, or don't, hurt the vulnerable. In the data privacy debate, generalized philosophical gripes can sometimes overshadow concrete harms. 50 Putting the discriminatory use of data front and center focuses discussion of a federal framework on what it actually ought to do: protect Americans, especially those who need it most.

翻译题 46 Much of the language used to describe monetary policy, such as steering the economy to a soft landing or a touch on the brakes, makes itself sound like a precise science. Nothing could be further from the truth. The link between interest rates and inflation is uncertain. And there are long, variable lags before policy changes have any effect on the economy. 47 Hence there is an analogy that likens the conduct of monetary policy to driving a car with a blackened windscreen, a cracked rearview mirror and a faulty steering wheel. Given all these disadvantages, central bankers seem to have had much to boast about of late. Average inflation in the big seven industrial economies fell to a mere 2.3% last year, close to its lowest level in 30 years, before rising slightly to 2.5% this July. This is a long way below the double-digit rates which many countries experienced in the 1970s and early 1980s. It is also less than most forecasters had predicted. In late 1994 the panel of economists which The Economist polls each month said that America's inflation rate would average 3.5% in 1995. In fact, it fell to 2.6% in August, and is expected to average only about 3% for the year as a whole. 48 In Britain and Japan inflation is running half a percentage point below the rate predicted at the end of last year, this is no flash in the pan; over the past couple of years, inflation has been consistently lower than expected in Britain and America. 49 Economists have been particularly surprised by favourable inflation figures in Britain and the United States, since conventional measures suggest that both economies, and especially America's, have little productive slack. America's capacity utilisation, for example, hit historically high levels earlier this year, and its jobless rate (5.6% in August) has fallen below most estimates of the natural rate of unemployment—the rate below which inflation has taken off on the past. Why has inflation proved so mild? The most thrilling explanation is, unfortunately, a little defective. 50 Some economists argue that powerful structural changes in the world have upended the old economic models that were based upon the historical link between growth and inflation.

翻译题 46 U.S. farmers are planting more acres of crops using soil building and pollution fighting farming systems than traditional methods that rely on the plow or intensive tillage, according to a report due to be released early next month. The report, titled 'National Crop Residue Management Survey,' shows a 6 million acre gain for environmentally friendly farming systems this year. 47 It also shows traditional farming methods, which result in greater soil erosion and run off from fields~ declined by 4 million acres. 48 The survey, conducted on a county-by-county basis by USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), indicates that farmers in Iowa, Illinois, South Dakota, Kansas, and Indiana contributed the most to the increase in acres grown with environmentally friendly farming systems known as conservation tillage systems. These states accounted for 5 million of the 6 million acre increase in conservation tillage this year. All conservation tillage systems, such as no-till, mulch-till, ridge-till, strip-till, and zone-till, rely on less tillage or less soil disturbance to plant and manage crops. Farmers who use these systems leave plant materials-stems, stalks, and leaves-on the surface of fields after harvest. The plant materials, also called crop residues, serve as a blanket to protect the soil from erosion. The crop residues slowly decompose to add organic matter to the soil much like mulching or composting adds organic matter to a garden. The survey results for 1997 indicate that conservation tillage systems now account for 109.8 million acres or fully 37 percent of the 294.6 million annually planted cropland acres in the United States. In the meantime, traditional systems that rely on the plow or intensive tillage fell to 107.6 million acres this year. The remaining acres are in an intermediate farming system known as reduced till. 49 The head of the nonprofit center that compiles and publishes the annual survey is calling on consumers and farmers alike to focus increased attention on conservation tillage systems. ' 50 Independent research and practical application across the country show that these systems not only replenish and build organic matter in the soil for improved future food productivity but they will also protect water quality and enhance wildlife and the environment for future generations,' says John Hebblethwaite, executive director of the Conservation Technology Information Center. 'There is also growing evidence that these systems can even help us combat the potential for global warming,' he adds.

翻译题Following the explosion of creativity in Florence during the 14th century known as the Renaissance, the modern world saw a departure from what it had once known

翻译题Researchers investigating brain size and mental ability say their work offers evidence that education protects the mind from the brain's physical deterioration. 46 It is known that the brain shrinks as the body ages, but the effects on mental ability are different from person to person. Interestingly, in a study of elderly men and women, those who had more education actually had more brain shrinkage. 'That may seem like bad news,' said study author Dr. Edward Coffey, a professor of psychiatry and of neurology at Henry Ford Health System in Detroit. 47 However, he explained, the finding suggests that education allows people to withstand more brain tissue loss before their mental functioning begins to break down. The study, published in the July issue of Neurology, is the first to provide biological evidence to support a concept called the 'reserve' hypothesis, according to the researchers. In recent years, investigators have developed the idea that people who are more educated have greater cognitive reserves to draw upon as the brain ages; in essence, they have more brain tissue to spare. 48 Examining brain scans of 320 healthy men and women aged 66 to 90, researchers found that for each year of education the subjects had, there was greater shrink age of the outer layer of the brain known as the cortex. Yet on tests of cognition and memory, all participants scored in the range indicating normal. 'Everyone has some degree of brain shrinkage,' Coffey said. 'People lose (on average) 2.5 percent per decade starting in adulthood.' There is, however, a 'remarkable range' of shrinkage among people who show no signs of mental decline, Coffey noted. Overall health, he said, accounts for some differences in brain size. Alcohol or drug use, as well as medical conditions such as diabetes and high blood pressure, contribute to brain tissue loss throughout adulthood. In the absence of such medical conditions, Coffey said, education level helps explain the range of brain shrinkage exhibited among the mentally-fit elderly. The more-educated can withstand greater loss. 49 Coffeyand colleagues gauged shrinkage of the cortex by measuring the cerebrospinal fluid (脑脊液) surrounding the brain. The greater the amount of fluid, the greater the cortical (脑皮层的) shrinkage. Controlling for the health factors that contribute to brain injury, the researchers found that education was related to the severity of brain shrinkage. For each year of education from first grade on, subjects had an average of 1.77 milliliters 11 more cerebrospinal fluid around the brain. Just how education might affect brain cells is unknown. 50 In their report, the researchers speculated that in people with more education, certain brain structures deeper than the cortex may stay intact to compensate for cortical shrinkage.