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Speed
[Time1]
President Obama talks ‘Gangnam Style’
The pop culture phenomenon known as “Gangnam Style” has finally reached the highest office of the United States. When asked about the craze, President Obama simply remarked, “I think I can do that move.”
We can’t speak of President Obama’s confidence in the turnout of the 2012 election just yet, but he seems pretty secure in his dance moves. The hardest-hitting question President Obama has been asked yet was put forth by an interviewer curious as to whether or not the president had caught Gangnam fever yet.
On Tuesday, during a radio spot with WZID-FM in New Hampshire, President Obama was pressed on the issue, asked whether or not he or Michelle would eventually do a rendition of South Korean rapper PSY’s international viral hit, which has currently notched up just over 6.5 million views on YouTube.
“I just saw that video for the first time,” Obama replied. “I think I can do that move. But I’m not sure that the inauguration ball is the appropriate time to break that out.”
“Maybe,” he concluded, “I’ll do it privately for Michelle.”
“Gangnam Style” has spawned numerous public odes and parodies across the internet including a US Naval Academy version, a Saturday Night Live mock-up, and a Late Show with David Letterman clip that superimposed GOP candidate Mitt Romney’s head on the Gangnam dancer.
Personally, I think that the inauguration ball would be the perfect venue for a re-elected President Obama to go “Gangnam Style” with Michelle. PSY would probably have a heart attack.
(252)
[Time2]
View in the heart
One morning,a young monk gets up to clean up the courtyard and sees the fallen leaves from the ancient banyan are everywhere,he can't help worrying and look at the tree to sigh.For his sorrow is on the toppest,he throws down the broom and rushes to his master's room ,then he knocks on the door to plea for interview.His master hears it and opens the door,when he sees the disciple's worried look,he thinks something takes place,so he hurries to ask him:" My disciple, what does you worry about so much in the early morning? "
The young disciple is full of doubt and tells him:"Master, you persuades us to be diligent to cultivate our moral character and grasp the truth day and night,but, even I learn them well ,it is hard to avoid to die.Till that time,so-called me, so-called Dao, aren't they just like the defoliation in autumn or the deadwood in winter? and they will be buried by a heap of loess?"After hearing it ,the old monk points at the ancient banyan and says to the young monk:" My disciple ,you don't need to worry about this.In fact, the defoliation in autumn and the deadwood in winter will climb back to the trees silently and become the flowers in spring and grow up into the leaves in summer at the time of autumnal winds is blowing strongliest and the snow falls down most heavily.""Why don't I see it?"
"It is the reason that there isn't any view in your heart, so you can't see the bloom ."
Facing the withering defoliations and imaging they will be in bud,it needs to have an immortal of spring heart, an optimism of heart.
There are always some miseries you will meet in your whole life and strike you when you are unprepared, but we don't need to worry day after day for the arrival of this day, and feel sorry to yourself.
Treating the life with the attitude of the optimism, it can not only dissolve the agony and misfortune , but also bring a kind of pleased mood to you everyday and make your life bright and flourishing .
(357)
[Time3]
CIA director David Petraeus resigns over affair
CIA director David Petraeus has resigned from his post, admitting he had an extra-marital affair.
Mr Petraeus described his behaviour as "unacceptable" for the leader of the nation's main intelligence agency.
Unnamed officials said Mr Petraeus conducted the affair with his biographer, Paula Broadwell.
Mr Petraeus became CIA boss in 2011 after heading international forces in Iraq and later in Afghanistan.
Paula Broadwell graduated from the same West Point academy as Mr Petraeus
He was the highest-profile military officer of the post-9/11 years, winning plaudits for his role running the "surge" in Iraq and implementing a counter-insurgency strategy in Afghanistan.
He left his command role in Afghanistan in mid-2011, resigning from the US Army to head the CIA after Leon Panetta became defence secretary.
'Extremely poor judgment'
Shortly after Mr Petraeus resigned, reports emerged that the FBI had uncovered the affair during the course of an investigation into Mrs Broadwell.
The FBI was monitoring Mr Petraeus' email account to check whether Mrs Broadwell had access to it, administration officials were quoted as saying by the Associated Press.
Mr Petraeus' resignation came just three days after President Barack Obama's re-election, and prompted a flurry of statements from the White House, intelligence community and Mr Petraeus himself.
“Start Quote
By any measure, through his lifetime of service David Petraeus has made our country safer and stronger”
End Quote Barack Obama US President
Announcing his decision to stand down, the former general was full of contrition.
"After being married for over 37 years, I showed extremely poor judgment by engaging in an extra-marital affair," Mr Petraeus said in a statement.
"Such behaviour is unacceptable, both as a husband and as the leader of an organisation such as ours. This afternoon, the president graciously accepted my resignation."
Mrs Broadwell is a Harvard University research associate and PhD candidate at King's College, London.
She has a military background, graduating from the same West Point Academy as Mr Petraeus. She is married to radiographer Scott Broadwell and lives in Charlotte, North Carolina.
She spent months embedded alongside the then-general in Afghanistan while researching her 2011 book, All In: The Education of General David Petraeus. The book was widely seen as a positive account of his leadership methods.
(356)
[Time4]
EU budget talks for 2013 collapse
Talks to agree the EU's 2013 budget have collapsed, after negotiators from the EU and member states were unable to agree on extra funding for 2012.
The EU Commission and European Parliament had asked for a budget rise of 6.8% in 2013.
But most governments wanted to limit the rise to just 2.8%.
The failure of the talks will dent hopes of agreement on the 2014-2020 budget, which is up for discussion later this month, correspondents say.
Friday's dispute was over an extra 9bn euros (£7bn; $12bn) in "emergency funding" for 2012, to cover budgets for education, infrastructure and research projects.
But Germany, France and other governments questioned the funding, and eight hours of talks produced no agreement.
"Under these conditions, we felt that negotiations which hadn't really begun by six o'clock in the evening couldn't reasonably be expected to finish during the night," said the parliament's lead negotiator, Alain Lamassoure.
At the European parliament, UK Conservative MEPs clashed with Parliament President Martin Schulz, a German Social Democrat, over the extra 9bn euros shortfall for 2012.
In 2012 the budget was 129.1bn euros, a 1.9% increase on 2011.
Among the schemes facing a shortfall this year is the Erasmus student exchange programme.
It has allowed nearly three million young Europeans to study abroad since it was launched 25 years ago.
In an open letter to EU leaders on Friday more than 100 famous Europeans, including film directors and footballers, warned that "thousands could miss out on a potentially life-changing experience".
Friday's talks did produce a declaration of political will to provide 670m euros to earthquake victims in Italy, but no agreement on how to finance it, the European Parliament said.
It said that if no agreement on the 2013 budget could be reached in the next 21 days, the European Commission would look to revise its budget proposal.
The UK's Financial Secretary to the Treasury, Greg Clark, said the EU needed to practise "fiscal discipline".
(325)
[Time5]
Liberal worries
India is an open, tolerant country. So why does liberalism not flourish there?
________________________________________
Gurcharan Das, once chief executive of Procter & Gamble in India and now a columnist and author, argues that it must, but it will need a political movement to drive it on. His country’s progress is stalling after two decades of rapid change. India desperately needs a fiercer push for liberal capitalism. Mr Das calls his new book “India Grows at Night”, a clarion call for such ideas. He wants a pro-market political party to be founded (like the Swatantra centre-right movement of the 1960s—see article) and for the dysfunctional, “flailing” state to be shrunk and improved. The author is likely to be ignored, even if his case is broadly convincing.
India enjoys a rich liberal heritage. For every story about feudalism, caste repression and the ongoing backwardness of a largely rural country, Mr Das counters with optimism about a bright, fast-rising, urban middle class. Indian society, he says, is by nature strong, free and tolerant. Its best leaders have promoted liberal thought in various guises, ever since Emperor Ashoka pushed acceptance of different religions more than 2,000 years ago. Rule by kings was usually tempered by respect for the learning of Brahmins. British colonial masters, for all their ills, left behind liberal institutions, such as courts and a nascent electoral system. And some of the nawabs and maharajahs were progressives, notably the 19th-century rulers of Travancore (now Kerala) who promoted public education, including for girls.
All that led up to a modern constitution, drafted by a brilliant Dalit leader, B.R. Ambedkar, that ensures Indians have many of the same freedoms that exist in the West. Power may ebb and flow—Mr Das is keen that much more decision-making gets quickly devolved to the lowest possible levels, to states or even villages—but no one seriously expects India to fracture.
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[补充5]
Yet despite having built all that, India’s rulers, and many voters, are still far from convinced by full-fledged liberal ideas, least of all free-market ones. The ruling Congress party is secular-minded but has slowly, at times stealthily (and often only under immense pressure) pushed liberal economic reforms. Political leaders, most obviously the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty that dominates Congress, are keener on making populist promises and building a bigger welfare state.
Mr Das offers a sharp anecdote on this, recalling how a Chinese friend, a high-ranking Communist-Party figure, was horrified by an official Indian scheme that guarantees 100 days of annual paid work to rural families. He warned it would bankrupt India’s government and produce neither useful jobs nor decent infrastructure. Private, productive jobs, he insisted, could instead rise on the back of good roads. Yet Indian politicians pushed on and today plan more welfare; they remain far more suspicious than China’s rulers of the idea that capitalism is the best way to tackle poverty and hunger.
Mr Das insists that liberal ideas offer the clearest answer to many of India’s woes. Corruption, for example, will not be beaten with a big, new authoritarian bureaucracy, as anti-graft protesters want. Instead discretionary powers must be wrested from dodgy bureaucrats and politicians, the state made smaller, and markets allowed, openly and freely, to allocate resources. That means making the state more efficient. Every Indian factory-owner must, Mr Das writes, on average, confront 17 different inspectors, each with the power to close his business. (In other words, they must be bribed.) His solutions to the slowdown in economic growth would include making it easier for companies to hire and fire and to make the buying and selling of land more transparent.
Mr Das’s celebration of liberalism is admirable. But he is surely misty-eyed when he asserts that ordinary Indians are ready to embrace it. By his over-optimistic reckoning there are almost 300m people in the middle class, a figure which will rise above 650m a decade from now. (Most estimates put the current figure at 160m.) Such voters, he says, might propel an Indian equivalent to Ronald Reagan or Margaret Thatcher into office. That looks naive. Even among the urban middle class who bother to vote, politicians’ promises of welfare and subsidies remain popular. They dish out free televisions or laptops to voters because that is what the middle classes want. Local populists notch up ever more support.
The book raises some excellent questions. But what is missing, perhaps surprisingly given Mr Das’s connections, is a real insider’s account of why the sort of ideas he is promoting so often fail to get implemented. Relatively few Indians claim to be avowed classic liberals, yet a clutch of powerful people, including the current prime minister, Manmohan Singh, and others in cabinet, would agree with much of Mr Das’s argument.
Weak political leadership may be the reason why more has not been done. Or perhaps it is the fault of the wealthy figures inside the ruling Congress movement (and other parties), who rely on a bloated state and graft to keep political and private funds flowing. Mr Das hints now and then that self-serving bureaucrats are far more powerful political actors than is widely assumed. A more liberal, open India may eventually come, but not before a brighter light is shone into its murkier corners.
[Obstacle]
Sizing Up The New iPad Mini
The iPad has been a true tech phenomenon. Apple has sold 100 million of the tablets in just 2½ years, even though many people doubted they needed a $500 device that's in between a smartphone and a laptop. No competing model has gained significant traction in the market.
Still, there's been a problem with the iPad. Though it's much smaller than a laptop, at just 1.44 pounds, and 0.37 inch thick, it can be too heavy to hold for long periods of time, such as when you're using it to read an e-book. It typically takes two hands to hold. Its 9.7-inch screen, while a pleasure to use, makes it too large to carry without a thought in many purses.
So, on Friday, Apple is introducing a much smaller variant, the iPad Mini, which works exactly like the original and runs all the same apps -- the 275,000 tablet-optimized programs plus the rest of the over 700,000 apps available for the iOS operating system the iPad shares with Apple's iPhone.
The iPad Mini weighs just less than 11 ounces, and is only 0.28 inch thick. That's 53% lighter and 23% thinner than the standard iPad. It's 5.3 inches wide versus 7.3 inches for its larger sibling.
In shrinking the iconic iPad, Apple has pulled off an impressive feat. It has managed to create a tablet that's notably thinner and lighter than the leading small competitors with 7-inch screens, while squeezing in a significantly roomier 7.9-inch display. And it has shunned the plastic construction used in its smaller rivals to retain the iPad's sturdier aluminum and glass body.
Unlike its two top small tablet competitors, the Mini has a rear camera. And unlike the Kindle Fire HD, it offers optional cellular data connectivity to supplement Wi-Fi. It has very good battery life.
However, there are two downsides compared with the leading 7-inch competitors, the Google Nexus 7 and the Amazon Kindle Fire HD. First, the iPad mini starts at $329, versus $199 for its two main rivals (though the Fire HD costs $214 without annoying ads). Second, it has a lower screen resolution -- 1024x768, versus 1280x800 for the other two.
I've been testing the iPad Mini for several days and found it does exactly what it promises: It brings the iPad experience to a smaller device. Every app that ran on my larger iPad ran perfectly on the Mini. I was able to use it one-handed and hold it for long periods of time without tiring. My only complaints were that it's a tad too wide to fit in most of my pockets, and the screen resolution is a big step backwards from the Retina display on the current large iPad.
But it's about 30% thinner than the leading 7-inch competitors, the Google Nexus 7 and the Amazon Kindle Fire 7. And it's about 9% lighter than the Nexus and about 22% lighter than the Fire HD. It's very slightly narrower across than the Fire HD, but about 11% wider than the Nexus. I found it easy to hold with one hand, though the width might be a bit too much for some people with smaller hands.
Even though the Mini is thinner and lighter than the leading 7-inch tablets, its larger screen provides about 35% more room for viewing content like books and Web pages. I found it easy to see and read material on the screen and to tap and swipe. My only complaint was that the keyboard, in portrait mode, felt a bit cramped, though it was fine in landscape mode. (I found that, unlike with the big iPad, it was more common for me to hold the Mini in portrait mode.)
In my harsh battery test, where I play videos back to back with the screen set at 75% and the Wi-Fi on to collect email, the iPad mini exceeded Apple's battery life claim of 10 hours and lasted 10 hours and 27 minutes. That was about an hour better than the Kindle Fire HD, but about 17 minutes less than the Nexus 7.
I found the cameras did a very good job. I conducted several clear video chats using the 1.2 megapixel front camera, and the 5-megapixel rear camera produced very good photos and videos. The stereo speakers sounded good to my ears.
So why did Apple, whose large iPad and new Macs boast extremely high screen resolution, choose a lower resolution for the Mini? The company did so because it says there are only two resolutions that allow its tablet apps to run unmodified. One is the extremely high resolution on the current large iPad, which would have boosted the cost and lowered the battery life of the Mini. The other, the one Apple chose for the Mini, is the same resolution on iPad models consumers have snapped up: the original iPad and the iPad 2, which is still on the market at $399.
This makes sense, but it means that, unlike its closest competitors, the Mini can't play video in high definition. Apple insists the device does better than standard definition, if you are obtaining the video from its iTunes service, since iTunes scales the video for the device, so it will render somewhere between standard definition and HD. It says some other services will do the same. But the lack of true HD gives the Nexus and Fire HD an advantage for video fans. In my tests, video looked just fine, but not as good as on the regular iPad.
The cellular models, which will start at $459, will be available in a couple of weeks.
The $329 price may well tempt some budget-conscious buyers who have lusted for an iPad. But Apple believes the lower size and weight, not the price, are the key attractions.
If you love the iPad, or want one, but just found it too large or heavy, the iPad Mini is the perfect solution.
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发表于 2012-11-10 20:44:33
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