The Pentagon dodges the bullet
五角大楼躲过了旋风

Barack Obama is spending more on defence than his predecessors
奥巴马政府的国防支出超过前任

Feb 4th 2010 | From The Economist print edition

EVEN Robert Gates, the American defence secretary, admits that the $708 billion requested by Barack Obama for defence spending next year is “a massive number”. The Pentagon was exempted from the administration’s spending freeze; the surge in Afghanistan consumes all the savings from the drawdown from Iraq. So America will spend more money on defence than it did during the Korean or Vietnam wars, though as a share of national wealth defence spending is still relatively low in historical terms (see chart).

美国国防部长罗伯特•盖茨也承认,奥巴马政府提出的7080亿美元的下一年度国防预算是一个“天文数字”。五角大楼成功地躲过了这场政府刮起的冻结支出的旋风。从伊拉克撤出部队省下的钱全都被增兵阿富汗的行动花光了。因此，美国的国防预算将要超过朝鲜战争和越南战争期间的支出。但以占国民经济总收入的百分比计算，这一预算还是各历史时期中相对较低的。（见图表）

For Mr Gates the 2011 budget request, and the new quadrennial defence review (QDR) issued on the same day, are meant to consolidate the changes he has been promoting: giving priority to fighting today’s wars over buying equipment for tomorrow’s possible conflicts. The Obama administration’s first QDR is more evolution than revolution. That was to be expected, given that Mr Gates was kept on from the administration of George Bush.

对盖茨先生来说，2011年的国防预算草案以及同日发布的新一期《四年防务评估报告》（QDR）都意味着进一步巩固了他一直在推动的预算改革：防务支出要优先用于目前正在进行的战争行动，为今后可能的冲突购买装备的支出要排在第二位。奥玛巴当局的第一期QDR并未彻底推翻前一期的《四年防务评估报告》，而是在它的基础上进行了一些修正。考虑到盖茨先生是乔治•布什政府留任的国防部长，这样的政策是可以预料到的。

Mr Gates’s tenure at the Pentagon is notable for two features: his willingness to kill off expensive projects, and his ruthlessness in punishing failure. Last year Mr Gates halted projects such as the new presidential helicopter and capped production of the air force’s top-of-the-line F-22 fighter—saving, he says, $330 billion. He has also fired, among others, the secretaries of the army and of the air force.

这位五角大楼的大老板以下列两个特点而闻名：他毫不犹豫地取缔耗资过大的项目；毫不手软地惩处犯有过失者。去年，他就下令终止了制造新的总统专用直升机，削减了空军最尖端的F-22战斗机的产量，据他说，此举能节省3300亿美元。他还解除了包括陆军参谋长和空军参谋长在内的一批高级将领的职务。

His latest cull is less dramatic. He wants to cancel the navy’s new cruiser and halt plans to replace its EP-3 intelligence aircraft. He seeks to cap production of the C-17 aircraft and kill off plans for an alternate engine for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter—and if Congress attempts to preserve these two projects, Mr Gates said, he will ask Mr Obama to veto the budget.

相比之下，他最近的消减项目行动就不那么引人注目了。他下令取消美国海军新型巡洋舰的研制，终止EP-3电子侦察机的更新换代计划。他目前正积极推动减少C-17运输机的生产数量，取消为F-35联合攻击战斗机更换发动机的计划。盖茨威胁说，如果国会试图保留这两个项目，他就会要求奥巴马总统否决预算。

But is the defence budget on target?
国防预算也会成为攻击的目标吗？

The idea is to free up money for, among other things, more drones (see picture) and helicopters. Electronic warfare and cybersecurity would also be beefed up. With other countries, notably China, finding new ways to sink ships and shoot down planes and satellites, the QDR considers a new generation of long-range weapons such as unmanned bombers launched from aircraft carriers and long-range cruise missiles fired from submarines.

这样做的目的是要挤出钱来用于采购更多的无人机（见图）和直升机以及其它用途。电子战和网络安全也需要更多的资金投入。由于其它国家（显然是指中国）正在研制新型防空、反舰、反卫星武器，这份《四年防务评估报告》要求研制新一代远程武器系统，如从航空母舰上起飞的无人驾驶轰炸机、潜艇上发射的远程巡航导弹等。

The F-35 is supposed to become the backbone of American air power, but its costs have been rising. So Mr Gates announced he would replace the Pentagon’s manager in charge of the programme, Major-General David Heinz, a two-star general, with a three-star officer. He said he would also dock $614m in performance fees for the contractor, Lockheed Martin.

F-35战机将成为美国空军的主要机种，但其所需费用在不断增加。因此盖茨宣布他将用一名三星中将取代现在的二星少将大卫•希内茨成为五角大楼负责该项目的主任。盖茨说，还将削减该项目承包商的奖金。这个项目的承包商是洛克希德•马丁公司。

The review seeks to break with the old requirement that America should be able to fight two major wars at the same time. Mr Gates said America has already been fighting big conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, but had to “prepare for a much broader range of security challenges on the horizon”. What practical changes this entails is not yet clear. The 2006 QDR already foresaw that America had to deal with a range of crises, and Mr Gates’s review only tinkers with America’s military structure.

以往要求美国具有同时进行两场大规模战争的能力，而这份《四年防务评估报告》要打破这一战略。盖茨指出，美国已经是在伊拉克与阿富汗进行着两场大规模战争，而且必须“在更加宽广的战线上迎接即将出现的（对美国）安全的挑战”。这将导致什么样的具体变化尚不明了。2006年版的QDR已经预见到美国必须应付一系列的危机，而盖茨先生的此份报告不过是对美国的军事结构进行了一些拙劣的修补。

The QDR foresees a world in which political, economic and military power is “more diffuse”. With the rise of China and India, America “will remain the most powerful actor but must increasingly work with key allies and partners”. Yet for now, Mr Gates reckons the most immediate factor affecting America’s future security is whether it wins or loses today’s wars.

这份QDR预见，今后的世界里政治、经济与军事实力将更加分散。伴随着中国与印度的崛起，美国“依然能够是世界上最强大的国家，在世界事务中发挥最主要的作用，但必须不断增加重要盟国与合作伙伴的协同”。然而眼下，盖茨认为影响美国今后安全最紧迫的是能否打赢目前正在进行的战争。

附注：dodge the bullet
If someone has dodged a bullet, they have successfully avoided a very serious problem.

译者：dqzxf
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Ticking up 经济复苏

Jan 29th 2010 | WASHINGTON, DC | From The Economist online

America’s economy grew by 5.7% at the end of 2009. Yet it remains vulnerable
美国经济在2009年年末增长了5.7%。但是她仍需要悉心呵护。

AFTER a tough start to 2010, Barack Obama could not have asked for better news on the economy to distract attention from his political difficulties. In the fourth quarter of last year American GDP grew by an impressive 5.7%, at an annual rate, the best quarterly performance since 2003. Expansion was driven by growth in private inventories and an increase in exports. For all of 2009 output declined by 2.4%, but for Americans weary from two years of declining employment, the fourth-quarter figure offers a clear signal that the worst is over.
新年伊始就遭遇不顺，（美国总统）巴拉克•奥巴马可能不会指望更好的经济表现来分散旁人对他政治困境的关注。按年率计算，去年第四季度，美国国内生产总值增长5.7%，这令人印象深刻，是自2003年以来最优异的季度表现。经济复苏是受私人投资和出口的双升所拉动。在整个2009年，经济产出下降了2.9%，但是，对于经历了两年来就业量下滑的美国人来说，第四季度的数据清晰得表明：经济已经触底回升。

Yet only cautious celebration is in order. There are reasons to doubt that the impressive performance in a single quarter will be repeated in the coming months. Weak fundamentals will prevent the American economy from sustaining that fast pace of growth. Of the 5.7% increase in real output, 3.4 percentage points came from inventory changes, as firms which had operated on a shoestring in the recession built inventories back to normal levels. That brief buying spree brought some workers back to assembly lines, but unless a new source of demand arises the boost from restocking will fade and growth will slow.
然而，仅是小心的庆祝还算合适。（我们）有理由持有这样的疑虑：单季度如此骄人的经济表现是否还会在未来不断出现。脆弱的经济基本面不会使美国经济保持快速增长。经济按实际值计算增长5点7个百分点（减去通货膨胀率——即09年商品和劳务价格变化程度），其中有3点4个百分点来自于私人投资的增加，因为在萧条中，勒紧裤带（裁汰员工，削减支出，降低规模）度日的公司已将生产（产品）拉回正常水平。短暂的抢购风（原译为：需求升温）使部分工人重新站在流水作业线旁边，但是如果新的需求源不能异军突起，那么产品数量的增加之势将一去（暂）不复返而且经济增长会放缓。

There are already signs of a loss of momentum. According to Macroeconomic Advisers, a consultancy, most of the inventory boost came in October, when growth roared ahead at a 16.4% annual rate. By November, growth had already quietened substantially. And throughout the fourth quarter the economy has continued to shed jobs. It is difficult to sustain growth when employment is not rising.
已有迹象表明：经济上行的势头正在消退。根据宏观经济咨询公司（一家咨询公司）的有关数据，绝大多数产品存货的增加始于去年10月份，那时经济以16.4%的年率大踏步回升。截止11月，经济增长已大体消弭。接着（去年）整个第四季度经济未能力挽失业率攀升的狂澜。在就业率下降之时去维持经济的增长，此难于登天矣。

Nor is it clear where new demand might arise. As the GDP report makes plain, personal consumption remains extremely weak; consumption rose by just 2.0% for the quarter, below the 2.8% increase of the previous three months. Spending will probably remain subdued throughout 2010. According to a recent IMF research note, the crisis and recession significantly damaged household wealth, suggesting that savings rates will rise in a recovery. The effect on consumption may be to trim 3% off GDP relative to pre-crisis levels. Indeed, the fourth-quarter savings rate ticked up to 4.6%, from 4.5% during the previous period. New demand growth will have to come elsewhere.
新需求出自哪里，尚不明了。正如GDP报告上写得清清楚楚一般，个人消费仍然相当疲软；第4季度消费仅仅上升了2.0%，低于过去3个月2.8%的上升水平。（家庭）投入在今年很有可能位于低水平。IMF最近的研究报告显示，经济危机和萧条严重缩水了家庭资产，这表明储蓄率会在经济复苏中上升。与危机前的水平相比，消费对GDP的贡献可能减少3个百分点，事实上，第四季度储蓄率从前期的4.5%上升到4.6%。新需求将不得不问路它方。

Investment may also disappoint in 2010, because of overcapacity. Oversupply in both residential and commercial property has discouraged investment in the sectors and meant that construction employment is not rising. Housing starts continue to languish at around a third of normal levels. Industrial-capacity use is similarly well below pre-recession levels. Until most existing capacity is put to productive use, there is little reason for businesses to make new investments.
因为会出现产能过剩，这一年（2010年）的投资可能也会受挫。住宅房和商业房的过度供给（或“过度膨胀”）将会给许多部门的投资泼冷水并且房市的泡沫意味着建筑业行中的就业率难有起色。房市经济开始冷却，大约是正常水平的1/3。产能的使用（或者投入）同样远远低于危机前的水平。除非绝大多数产能投入生产使用，否则经济发展中出现新一轮投资之谈无异于痴人说梦（或者“根本站不住脚”）。

Nor does it help that government economic support will fade during 2010. Mark Zandi, an economist with Moody’s Economy.com, estimates that the federal stimulus contributed about two percentage points of growth in the fourth quarter. That will drop below one percentage point by mid-year and fall to nothing thereafter. State budget cuts will also be a drain on output, as they have been for most of the recession. Drops in state-government spending subtracted 0.1% from output for all of 2009.
2010年政府救市方案的退出后，经济将难有改观。Mark Zandi（一位来自Moody’s Economy.com 的经济学家）估计，联邦政府的刺激政策对第四季度的经济增长贡献了两个百分点。这一贡献率在年中到来之前将降至1个百分点之下并最后彻底消失。{州政府预算的缩减也将拖累经济的发展，正像以前绝大多数经济衰退中所发生的一样。（此处感谢join_soon）}2009年全年，州政府开支的削减使产出降低了0.1%。

And even the fourth quarter’s spirited performance may be overstated. Third-quarter growth was originally reported at 3.5%, only to be revised down later to 2.2%.
接着，甚至是（去年）第四季度振奋人心的经济表现或许也被人为夸大。去年第三季度经济增长在报告中起初是3.5%，结果后来竟然修订为2.2%。

Nonetheless, the performance of the American economy in the fourth quarter is encouraging, suggesting firmly that America has pulled free of recession. Yet caution is in order. If the response is to cut back quickly on fiscal and monetary support for the economy, this flash of growth could disappear as quickly as it emerged.
但是，美国经济第4季度的表现还是鼓舞人心的，这清楚地说明美国已经走出经济衰退的泥潭。然而保持谨慎的态度是合宜的。如果马上撤出支撑经济的财政和货币（的扩张性）政策，那么经济增长的闪光可能会来也匆匆，去也匆匆。

译者：intel英杰
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Feb 4th 2010 | From The Economist print edition

China reacted angrily to America’s plan to sell $6 billion-worth of weapons to Taiwan. It suspended military contacts, threatened sanctions against American companies involved in the arms sales and said it would review co-operation on international issues.

中国对美国60亿美元的售台武器计划作出激烈反应。中国已切断中美军事联系，威胁将对参与售台武器的美国企业进行制裁，并表示将重新考虑在国际事务上的合作事宜。

As talks in Beijing between China and representatives of the Dalai Lama ended with little sign of progress, Chinese officials warned Barack Obama against proceeding with a planned meeting with the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader. Mr Obama insisted that it would go ahead, probably later this month.

中国与达赖喇嘛私人代表的会谈结束，成果甚少。中国官方警告奥巴马，不要和这位流亡的西藏精神领袖进行既定的会面。奥巴马表示会谈不会取消，并很可能会在本月末举行。

Anwar Ibrahim, leader of Malaysia’s opposition, went on trial charged with sodomy. Mr Anwar has denied the allegations and accused the prime minister, Najib Razak, of a conspiracy against him. Previously convicted and jailed on a similar charge, Mr Anwar was later exonerated.

马拉西亚反对党领袖华安因受鸡奸罪的指控出庭受审。华安否认了这一指控，并控诉这是总理纳吉布的阴谋。华安曾因类似指控而被判刑，但后来被无罪释放。

In Sri Lanka several dozen supporters of Sarath Fonseka, the defeated candidate in last month’s election, were detained, accused of involvement in a plot to ssassinate Mahinda Rajapaksa, the victorious president. Journalists’ unions and foreign human-rights groups condemned a deterioration in press freedom.

在斯里兰卡，上月竞选中失利的Sarath Fonseka的数十名支持者被拘捕，他们被指控参与了现任总统的刺杀计划。记者工会和海外人权组织对新闻自由状况的恶化表示谴责。

Three American soldiers were killed, along with three children and a Pakistani soldier, in a bomb attack outside a girls’ school in the north-west of Pakistan. The Americans were said to be counter-insurgency trainers working with Pakistan’s Frontier Corps.

在一所女校附近的炸弹袭击中，三名美国士兵，连同三名儿童和一名巴基斯坦士兵丧生。这几名美国人据传是工作于边境兵团（Frontier Corps）的反暴动训练员。

On a mission
行动中

As the relief effort following Haiti’s huge earthquake continued, members of a Baptist group from Idaho were arrested and accused of trying to smuggle 33 Haitian children out of the country. Haiti said the death toll now exceeded 200,000, the first estimate.

随着海地大地震的救援工作继续进行，几名来自爱达华州的浸信会教徒被拘捕，并受到企图将33名海地儿童拐卖出该国的指控。海地的初次死亡统计预计遇难者人数超过20万。

Argentina’s president, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, won her battle to remove Martín Redrado as head of the Central Bank for opposing her plan to use some of the country’s dollar reserves to repay debt. His replacement is an economist said to be closer to the president.

阿根廷总统Cristina Fernández de Kirchner如愿将央行行长Martín Redrado革职。Martín Redrado反对她用美元储备支付债务的主张。替任该职位的经济学家据传和总统交往更深。

President Álvaro Uribe of Colombia became the first foreign leader to visit Honduras’s new president, Porfirio Lobo. Meanwhile, the United States restored aid that had been cut off to Honduras after a coup that removed Manuel Zelaya from the presidency in June.

哥伦比亚总统Álvaro Uribe成为首位访问洪都拉斯新总统Porfirio Lobo的外国领导。与此同时，联合国恢复了政变后中断的对该国的援助。该政变在6月将Manuel Zelaya从总统之位上赶了下来。

Gunmen slaughtered a dozen teenagers and two adults at a birthday party in Ciudad Juárez, a Mexican city in the grip of drug-related murders.

持枪者在墨西哥城市Juárez的一个生日派对上屠杀了12名少年和2名成人。在Juárez，有毒品有关的谋杀时有发生，该城市深受其害。

Debt watch
偿债

The European Commission accepted Greece’s latest deficit-reduction plan, but vowed to monitor progress closely. In a broadcast to the country the Greek prime minister, George Papandreou, made a plea for national unity, but public-sector workers continued with plans to strike.

欧盟委员会接受了希腊最新的赤字削减计划，并表示将密切监督其进展情况。在一次全国的广播讲话中，希腊总理George Papandreou呼吁国民团结一致，但是公务员的罢工计划照常进行。

The two candidates in Ukraine’s presidential election run-off, Yulia Tymoshenko and Viktor Yanukovich, traded insults as the country prepared to vote. Tension rose when the Ukrainian secret service announced that it had detained five Russians last month for spying.

乌克兰复选的两名总统候选人季莫申科（Yulia Tymoshenko）和亚努科维奇（Viktor Yanukovich）在国民准备投票之际，相互诋毁攻击。乌克兰情报部门披露，上月5名俄罗斯人因从事间谍活动被捕，局势因此更加紧张。

Barack Obama announced that he would not attend a summit with the European Union planned for May. Some thought the move signalled the changing foreign-policy priorities of the Obama administration; others suggested the Americans were simply tired of pointless meetings with a proliferation of European leaders.

奥巴马宣布不会参加和欧盟定于5月举行的峰会。部分人认为这意味着奥巴马政府外交中心的转变，另一些人认为这只仅仅是因为美国厌倦了和一波又一波的欧洲领导人进行不着边际的会谈。

Tony Blair testified at the Iraq war inquiry in Britain. The former prime minister gave a stout defence of his decision to send British troops into Iraq, said he would do it again, and asked what the situation would be like now if Saddam Hussein had been left in power to develop WMD. One of his former ministers said Mr Blair was being “ludicrous”.

Moon shot
月球被毙

The White House unveiled a $3.8 trillion budget for the next fiscal year, starting in October. Many of its highlights, such as a new tax on banks, had been previously trailed, but the document also outlined spending on jobs. NASA’s $100 billion plan to return men to the moon was scrapped.

白宫公布了下一财年（10月开始）3.8亿万美元的预算案。其中的重头项目（比如新开的银行税）很多都不见踪影，但是该预算草案还列出了就业的相关支出。美国航空局1000亿美元的载人探月计划被枪毙。

Barack Obama gave a speech to congressional Republicans in which he called for bipartisanship in Washington and took questions from his opponents on health care, the deficit and other matters. The rare event was televised, and was an instant hit on YouTube.

奥巴马向共和党议员发表演讲，他呼吁两党合作，并回答了反对党有关医改、赤字等问题上的提问。电视台直播了这一罕见的场合，并立即成为youtube的热门视频。

America’s defence secretary announced a review of the “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy which bars openly gay soldiers from serving in the armed forces. Admiral Mike Mullen heartily supported the review, the first time a chairman of the joint chiefs of staff has backed the idea of allowing gay troops to serve. Congress will have the ultimate say, but not any time soon. See article

美国国防部长对“不问不说”政策做了总结称述。该政策禁止公开同性恋军人在部队服役。海军上将Mike Mullen又重支持这一总结称述，这是第一次“参谋首长联席会议”的主席支持允许同性恋部队服役的做法。国会将最终说了算，但是近期不会有结果。

Tony Blair testified at the Iraq war inquiry in Britain. The former prime minister gave a stout defence of his decision to send British troops into Iraq, said he would do it again, and asked what the situation would be like now if Saddam Hussein had been left in power to develop WMD. One of his former ministers said Mr Blair was being “ludicrous”.

英国，布莱尔在伊拉克战争调查会上发表了证词。在向伊拉克出兵问题上，这位前总理为自己做了坚决的辩护。他表示即使再做决定，也不会改变立场，并反问倘若萨达姆当政继并续研制大规模杀伤性武器的话，现在将是何等局面。他的一位前任部长称，布莱尔简直就是“可笑”。

Ballots and bombs
投票与投弹

Iraq’s electoral commission reversed a ban on more than 500 candidates who had been told they could not run in next month’s election because of past ties to Saddam Hussein’s Baath party. Prominent Sunni politicians, who had threatened to boycott the poll because they said the original decision discriminated against them, welcomed the move. Meanwhile, suicide-bombs in Baghdad and Karbala, one of Shia Islam’s holiest Iraqi towns, killed more than 60 Shia pilgrims.

伊拉克选举委员撤销了对500名候选人参选的禁令。他们之前因为与萨达姆的复兴党有旧交，而被告之不能参加下月的竞选。逊尼派的重要领导人对这一举动表示欢迎。他们之前称，原来举行的选举对他们不公，并因此威胁要抵制这次投票。同时，巴格达和卡尔拉巴（什叶派最圣神的城镇之一）的自杀性炸弹袭击中，60多名什叶派朝圣者丧生。

An agreement on a truce between Yemen’s government and Shia rebels of the Houthi clan broke down over an extra condition that the Houthis stop attacking Saudi forces across Yemen’s border. Yemeni government forces later said they had killed 16 Houthi rebels, including several leaders, in their stronghold, Saada. See article

也门政府和Houthi部落什叶派反叛者之间的停战协议因Houthi份子停止在也门边界进攻沙特军队的特殊状况而被撕毁。也门政府部队后来表示他们已经杀死16名Touthi叛乱分子，其中包括Saada要塞的几名领导人。

Israel’s secret service, Mossad, was widely suspected of the recent assassination in Dubai of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, a military commander of Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist move. Mr Mabhouh was said to have been close to Hamas’s political leader, Khaled Meshaal.

伊斯兰特工Mossad被多方怀疑是最近在迪拜暗杀哈马斯组织（巴勒斯坦伊斯兰运动团体）军官Mahmoud al-Mabhouh的嫌疑犯。据说，Mahmoud al-Mabhouh与哈马斯政界领导人Khaled Meshaal交往甚密。

The chief prosecutor at the International Criminal Court in The Hague won his appeal against a ruling that he could not charge Sudan’s president, Omar al-Bashir, with genocide in Darfur. Mr Bashir was indicted in March 2009. A warrant for his arrest will now be reconsidered. Mr Bashir, with the backing of some African governments but not others, still insists he will not appear before the court.

海牙国际刑事法庭上，高级检举人成功推翻了之前禁止他以达尔富尔种族屠杀事件起诉苏丹总统 Omar al-Bashir的判决。 Omar al-Bashir于2009年3月遭到起诉。现在，他可能遭到逮捕。Bashir在一部分非洲国家的支持下，仍旧表示决不会出庭。

译者：fhf208188
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Flame wars
火焰战争

Fire retardants may affect female reproduction
阻燃剂可能会影响女性生育

Jan 28th 2010 | From The Economist print edition

With free birth control? 免费避孕？

IN MANY ways DDT was a miracle chemical when its efficacy against biting insects was discovered at the start of the second world war. Its widespread use against malarial mosquitoes saved countless lives. What was not known at the time, however, was DDT’s propensity to accumulate, persist and damage the environment.

当第二次世界大战伊始发现它抗蚊虫叮咬的功效之后，滴滴涕在许多方面都成为一种特效化学药剂。它广泛用于抵抗传染疟疾的蚊虫，拯救了无数生命。然而在那时没有人知道，滴滴涕有富集性，稳定性并且破坏环境。

Similarly, over the last 30 years flame-retardant chemicals known as polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) have been widely used, although little is known about their broader effects. They are employed in furniture, carpeting, bedding, textiles, electronics and plastics to reduce the risk of ignition and slow down the rate at which things burn. But such is their persistence that they can also be found in soil, sediment, food, air and house dust, and 97% of Americans have detectable levels in their bodies. They are ubiquitous, in small amounts, in industrialised nations.

类似地，在过去的30年里，像我们知道的多溴二苯醚（PBDEs）等阻燃化学药剂也被广泛应用，但我们并不了解它们具有的其他功能。阻燃剂广泛应用于家具，地毯，卧具，纺织品，电子器件以及塑料制品领域，有助于降低物品起火风险，延缓物品燃烧速率。但由于其强稳定性，它也可以在泥土，沉淀，食物，空气及室内尘埃当中找到。97%的美国人体内阻燃剂达到可检测水平。在工业化国家中，阻燃剂的含量不大，但无处不在。

Increasingly, questions are being asked about their effects on health. Animal studies have shown them to affect neurological and reproductive behaviour. So Kim Harley of the University of California, Berkeley, and her colleagues decided to look at whether levels of PBDEs in women affected their fertility. They took blood samples from 223 women on low incomes living in California, most of whom were Mexican, and asked them how long they had taken to become pregnant. Their research, published in Environmental Health Perspectives, found that each tenfold increase in the blood concentration of PBDEs was linked to a 30% decrease in the probability of becoming pregnant each month.

人们越来越多的提出阻燃剂对于健康影响的问题。动物实验表明它们影响神经系统和生殖行为，所以来自加州大学伯克利分校的金哈利教授与他的同事决定观察多溴二苯醚的含量多少是否会影响女性生育能力。研究人员采集了加州低收入家庭的223位女性的血样，其中大多数人为墨西哥裔，并询问她们多久会怀孕。发表在《环境与健康展望》的研究报告中指出，多溴二苯醚血液含量每提升十倍，每月怀孕的可能性降低30%。

Because little work has been done on the effects of PBDEs on human health, this is an important study. But more work will be needed to confirm the result, says Tony Dayan, an emeritus professor of toxicology, because the study was based on a small, distinctive group.

由于多溴二苯醚影响人类健康的研究还刚刚起步，所以该项研究非常重要。已退休的毒理学教授托尼达扬称，确认该研究成果还需付出更多努力，因为研究只是基于一个狭小，特殊的群体。

If confirmed, the findings would be troubling. In North America, PBDE concentrations in humans have been doubling every four to six years since the 1970s, and are 20 times higher than in Europe. California’s residents have the highest exposures, which the authors speculate may be due to the state’s strict flammability legislation. In Europe the most suspect PBDEs have been banned for seven to eight years, says Dr Dayan. In America some are being phased out too. But they are so persistent that people are likely to be exposed to them for years. Dr Dayan says it could take two to three lifetimes for them to disappear from the population.

若被证实，研究结果将令人烦恼。在北美地区，多溴二苯醚在人体内的含量从20世纪70年代起，每四至六年翻一番，比欧洲人体内含量高20倍。加州居民接触该物质最多，研究人员推断可能是由于加州严格控制易燃物的法规造成。达扬教授称，在欧洲，那些最可疑的多溴二苯醚七八年前就已被禁用。在美国，一些品种也被逐步淘汰。但这些阻燃剂十分稳定，以至于人们可能会与其接触很多年。达扬教授称，可能需要两到三代人才能令阻燃剂在人群中消失。

Flame-retardant chemicals have undoubtedly saved many lives, but it seems possible that there have been some hidden costs. It would be tempting to think that the lessons of DDT have been heeded. However, Dr Harley says that at present even less is known about newer flame retardants.

毫无疑问，阻燃化学药剂拯救了许多生命，但它似乎也给人们带来一些隐性成本。我们很容易以为有关滴滴涕的教训（有好处，但是还有很多不为人知的危害）我们已经注意到了。但是，哈里教授说，目前，我们对较晚认识的阻燃剂的了解却更少（更多的危害是我们不知道的。）

【后注】：
DDT:DDT又叫滴滴涕，二二三，化学名为双对氯苯基三氯乙烷(Dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane)，化学式(ClC6H4)2CH(CCl3)。中文名称从英文缩写DDT而来，为白色晶体，不溶于水，溶于煤油，可制成乳剂，是有效的杀虫剂。为20世纪上半叶防止农业病虫害，减轻疟疾伤寒等蚊蝇传播的疾病危害起到了不小的作用。但在上个世纪60年代科学家们发现滴滴涕在环境中非常难降解，并可在动物脂肪内蓄积，甚至在南极企鹅的血液中也检测出滴滴涕，鸟类体内含滴滴涕会导致产软壳蛋而不能孵化，尤其是处于食物链顶极的食肉鸟如美国国鸟白头海雕几乎因此而灭绝。1962年，美国科学家卡尔松在其著作《寂静的春天》中怀疑，DDT进入食物链，是导致一些食肉和食鱼的鸟接近灭绝的主要原因。因此从70年代后滴滴涕逐渐被世界各国明令禁止生产和使用。滴滴涕还成为中国环境保护事业的催生婆。

PBDEs:多溴二苯醚最大的用途是作为阻燃剂,在制造过程中被人为添加到复合材料中去,使其不易燃烧.目前,PBDE已被广泛用于电子电器设备,自动控制设备,建筑材料和纺织品等商品化产品.1999年,全球多溴二苯醚的总使用量达到了80多万吨.在这些产品的制造,使用,循环回收,或是抛弃的过程中,多溴二苯醚进入到空气,水,土壤的循环系统中,成为日常环境中到处扩散的持久性有机污染物,对环境和人类的威胁日益升高. 多溴二苯醚具有很强的脂溶性,可以沉积生物体的脂肪组织并进行累积.研究表明,多溴二苯醚具有和PCB(多溴联苯)类似的神经毒性,会对肝和神经系统的发育造成毒害,同时干扰甲状腺内分泌,可能致癌或引起生物性别错乱.因此,越来越多国家开始关注起了多溴二苯醚物质的使用.美国加州州政府已于2003年8月第一个宣布2007年后禁止制造和使用PBDEs.欧盟2004年8月13日正式出台了《电子垃圾处理法》,要求2006年7月1日以后投放欧盟市场的电气和电子产品不得含有多溴二苯醚.

译者：schalke
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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

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
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=30449&extra=&page=1

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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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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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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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
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