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本帖#25有Michelle关于越障回忆的经验分享 SPEED
[Time1]
ONS stumbles over low data hurdle
“Happiness is important. Statistics are useful. Therefore, statistics about happiness are important and useful.” The logic of this implicit argument certainly doesn’t stand up. (Sex is important. Coffee mugs are useful. Are coffee mugs about sex therefore important and useful?)
The idea of collecting statistics on wellbeing deserves the benefit of the doubt. I worry, though, that every new wellbeing report from the Office for National Statistics just deepens that doubt. This latest is a grab-bag of statistics: income, job satisfaction, carbon monoxide levels. Some are collected by the ONS and some are not. There seems to be no serious analysis.
The?aim, then, is presumably communication. This is awkward; communication?is?really?not the ONS’s strong point. The report makes much of a vague visual similarity between the path of life satisfaction and real household actual income, or RHAI. Type that into the ONS website, and the top five results are all in Welsh, headed by a report titled “O’r gegin i ganolfan brosesu’r cyfrifiad”.
On the plus side,?the?ONS has created the “National Well-Being Interactive Wheel of Measures”, an animation that allows you to view lots of apparently arbitrary statistics. According to this, carbon emissions fell by an impressive 7 per cent between 2010 and 2011. Why, you might ask? A warmer winter, perhaps. The National Well-Being Interactive Wheel of Measures isn’t saying.
Good statistics are so indispensable, and so cheap relative to the cost of flying blind, that the ONS needs to clear a low hurdle to justify what it does. Yet here, it is stumbling.
(266)
[Time2]
US ruling rekindles Argentina default fear
Argentina has reacted angrily to a US court decision awarding hedge fund creditors more than $1.3bn, as bondholders vowed an immediate appeal to prevent the seizure of their interest payments.
The victory for several hedge funds against Argentina has sparked fears that the country could be plunged into yet another debilitating sovereign default, and threatens to make government restructurings more difficult in the future.
In what has been dubbed the “trial of the century” for sovereign debt restructurings, a US district court judge yesterday ordered Argentina to pay the hedge fund creditors – led by Elliott Associates and Aurelius Capital – in mid-December, when it must also pay bondholders. Unlike most of Argentina’s creditors, Elliott Associates and Aurelius Capital did not accept two restructurings in 2005 and 2010, choosing instead to pursue full repayment in the courts.
Whitney Debevoise, a lawyer at Arnold and Porter and a former US executive director at the World Bank, warned that making it easier for lenders to sue recalcitrant countries could complicate future debt restructurings. “Restructuring deals like Greece would have been much harder if ‘holdouts’ had much better rights,” he said
Agustín Rossi, the government’s chief in the lower house of Congress, said the ruling was “worthy of repudiation by our government and all Argentines, who have made an enormous effort to exit from the default”.
(221)
[Time3]
A Piece of NEWS
Some of the world's leading fashion retailers have come under fire after toxins were detected on their clothing in tests organized by environmental campaigner Greenpeace.
The group said yesterday it had investigated 20 fashion brands, including industry leaders Armani, Esprit and Gap and Chinese brands such as Metersbonwe and Vancl and found all were selling clothing contaminated with hazardous chemicals.
Of 141 samples, 89 were found to contain hormone-disrupting nonylphenol ethoxylates (NPEs). Products from C&A, Mango, Levi's, Calvin Klein, Zara, Metersbonwe, Jack & Jones, and Marks & Spencer had the highest concentration.
Four items from Giorgio Armani, Victoria's Secret and Tommy Hilfiger tested positive for phthalates, which can harm the reproductive system, and two Zara garments were contaminated with azo dyes releasing cancer-causing amines.
"These are the big potatoes in the fashion industry. Zara alone churns out 850 million clothing items a year. You can imagine the size of the toxic footprint it has left on this planet, particularly in developing countries like China where many of its products are made," said Li Yifang, an official with Greenpeace East Asia.
Greenpeace noted that when NPEs are discharged into the environment, it breaks down to form nonylphenol (NP), an organic compound with toxic, persistent and hormone-disrupting properties.
"NP is known to accumulate in animals, and it can build up in food chains," Li said, adding that even low levels threatened the environment and human health.
The investigation found that almost all problematic pieces with identifiable places of manufacture were made in developing countries, including 21 made in China, the world's biggest textile manufacturer and exporter.
NPEs are banned for textile production in Europe. In 2011, they were placed on China's list of toxic chemicals severely restricted for export and import.
On Greenpeace's official website, Li said an increasing number of consumers were becoming "fashion victims" and contributing to the industry's pollution.
"But it doesn't have to be so. We've already witnessed commitments from sportswear giants such as adidas, Nike and the Chinese brand Li-Ning, to eliminate the use of all hazardous chemicals in the entity of their supply chains," she added.
These brands were among 14 found with NPEs in products last year when Greenpeace launched a campaign to expose links between brands, suppliers and pollution.
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[剩下部分]
Greenpeace said seven major international brands - Puma, Nike, adidas, H&M, M&S, C&A and Li-Ning - had committed to change. Zara, Mango, Victoria's Secret and others were criticized for their lack of effort.
Vancl denied selling toxic clothing, saying their products complied with national standards.
"We always focus on the waste discharge and chemical residues management. Most of our material suppliers are renowned plants which strictly follow both the national and our own standards, If they fail to meet the requirements, we will order them to improve," it said in a response to the National Business Daily.
Other brands haven't commented on the Greenpeace report.
[Time4]
Larry Hagman star of Dallas dies at 81
Larry Hagman first performed as JR Ewing in 1978 and became its highest-paid star
Larry Hagman, who spent more than a decade playing TV villain JR Ewing has died at the age of 81, his family says.
Hagman, who had suffered from cancer and cirrhosis of the liver, died in hospital on Friday afternoon, according to a family statement.
"Larry was back in his beloved Dallas, re-enacting the iconic role he loved most," said the family. "He was surrounded by loved ones."Long-time friend Linda Gray, who played Sue Ellen, was by his bedside. "Larry Hagman was my best friend for 35 years," said Ms Gray in a statement released by her agent.
"He was the Pied Piper of life and brought joy to everyone he knew. He was creative, generous, funny, loving and talented and I will miss him enormously.
"He was an original and lived life to the full."Original cast member Victoria Principal, who played Pam Ewing, said Hagman had been "bigger than life, on-screen and off". Linda Gray said Hagman was the 'Pied Piper of life' "He is unforgettable, and irreplaceable, to millions of fans around the world, and in the hearts of each of us, who was lucky enough to know and love him."
During 13 years as the most scheming oil tycoon in Dallas, JR in his Stetson became one of themost distinctive faces on television screens across the world.
It quickly became one of the network's top-rated programmes - with its 356 episodes being seen by an estimated 300 million people in 57 countries - and was revived this year.
(254)
[Time5]
Five bottles of champagne
Born in Texas, Hagman later moved to Los Angeles where he was cared for mainly by his grandmother.After a brief period spent working in the fields, Hagman followed his mother - stage and screen actress Mary Martin - into showbusiness and even toured and played in musicals with her. Moving into television, he played astronaut Tony Nelson in the 1960s television comedy I Dream of Jeannie.
Hagman reportedly owned more than 2,000 cowboy hats
He first performed as JR Ewing in 1978 and became its highest-paid star, as the programme came to define 1980s excess.The actor himself owned more than 2,000 cowboy hats, his character's trademark.When Dallas finally finished in 1991, Hagman went on to appear in hit films Nixon and Primary Colors.His forthright biography, Hello Darlin', detailed his youthful drug-taking exploits and revealed the extent of his 50-year battle with alcoholism.
Even on the hardworking set of Dallas, he consumed five bottles of champagne a day for years and was finally diagnosed with cirrhosis of the liver in 1992.Three years later he had a liver transplant and kept a photo of the organ donor above his mirror."I say a prayer for him every morning," he said.
Despite this, Hagman continued to drink secretly until a further life-saving operation in 2003 forced him to stop.
(221)
OBSTRACLE
THE APOCALYPSE WAS on its way, and it would begin in Mexico. Where else? When archaeologists dug up Mayan calendars that ominously seemed to run out in the final days of 2012, some doomsayers predicted the end of the world. To many Mexicans it seemed like just another example of their country’s unending run of bad luck. The steepest recession on the American mainland, a plague of H1N1 swine flu and a deepening war against organised crime had made the preceding few years fairly grim. In 2009 the Pentagon had given warning that Mexico could become a “failed state”. Armageddon would be the icing on the cake.
But it turns out that the Mayan glyphs were misunderstood. The men with magnifying glasses now say that the world is not about to end—in fact, it seems that the Mayans were predicting something more like a renewal or a fresh start. Could the same be true of Mexico?
This special report will argue that there is a good chance of it. Some awful years are giving way to what, if managed properly, could be a prosperous period for Latin America’s second-largest economy. Big, irreversible trends, from a falling birth rate at home to rising wages in China, are starting to move in Mexico’s favour. At the same time the country’s leaders are at last starting to tackle some of the home-grown problems that have held it back.
Many of the things that the world thinks it knows about Mexico are no longer true. A serially underachieving economy, repeatedly trumped by dynamic Brazil? Mexico outpaced Brazil last year and will grow twice as fast this year. Out-of-control population growth and an endless exodus to the north? Net emigration is down to zero, if not negative, and the fertility rate will soon be lower than that of the United States. Grinding poverty? Yes, but alleviated by services such as universal free health care. A raging drug war? The failure of rich countries’ anti-drugs policies means that organised crime will not go away. But Mexico’s murder rate is now falling, albeit slowly, for the first time in five years.
A vast country with deeply ingrained problems and unreformed corners, Mexico could yet squander the opportunities that are coming its way. But there are signs that it is beginning to realise its potential. With luck, the dire predictions made by the Pentagon and others may turn out to be as reliable as a misread Mayan calendar.
 reparing to lead Mexico into this brightening future is the party most associated with its past. The Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) ran Mexico without interruption for most of the 20th century, silencing opposition through a mixture of co-option, corruption and occasional violence. Only in 2000 did it give up its grip on power to the conservative National Action Party (PAN), which fielded two presidents in succession: Vicente Fox, a former executive at Coca-Cola, and Felipe Calderón, a lawyer whose father was a founding member of the party. On December 1st Mr Calderón will hand over the presidency to the PRI’s Enrique Peña Nieto, who won a clear election victory on July 1st. A handsome 46-year-old with a gift for communication, Mr Peña claims to be the opposite of the crooked party men who ran the country in its pre-democratic days. But will the change be more than superficial?
Mr Peña says his priority is to make the economy grow faster in order to reduce poverty. Nearly half the population are poor, many of them in the south (see map). To achieve more rapid growth he will need to introduce a series of big economic reforms, some of which Mr Calderón attempted during his presidency, only to see them get stuck in Mexico’s cantankerous Congress. The PRI had hoped to win a majority in the summer’s elections, but it fell short by 11 in the 500-member Chamber of Deputies and by four in the 128-member Senate. In any case, some of the most important reforms will need changes to the constitution, which require a two-thirds majority in Congress.
However, Mr Peña has reason to be optimistic. The opposition PAN shares much of Mr Peña’s agenda, and together the two parties have a two-thirds majority in both houses of Congress. A new power to fast-track two bills per congressional session will help. A lot will depend on who ends up leading the PAN, which is restive and rudderless after finishing third in the presidential election. The handover period between July’s election and December’s inauguration has been a model of presidential co-operation. Mr Calderón’s crackdown on Mexico’s vindictive criminals has given him a personal reason to stay on good terms with the new government, to make sure of the protection he and his family will need when he leaves office.
Fighting on two fronts
Mr Peña’s main problem in Congress may well be his own party. As this special report went to press Congress was about to pass a labour-law reform, which among other things would make hiring and firing easier. But linked measures to make Mexico’s over-mighty unions more transparent and democratic were voted down by congressmen from Mr Peña’s own PRI, which has strong ties to unions. If the unions cannot be tamed, Mr Peña’s other reforms—to open up the monopolised energy sector and overhaul the tax system—may be similarly diluted.
The runner-up in the election was the left-winger Andrés Manuel López Obrador, known as AMLO, who came a very close second to Mr Calderón in 2006 but lost to Mr Peña by 6.8%. After both defeats he claimed fraud. The evidence is thin. The left has about a quarter of the seats in Congress, but many of its congressmen have little patience with AMLO, whose magnetic personality repels as many voters as it attracts.
The government may also face opposition outside Congress. Though a majority of the political class now seems to be convinced of the need for economic reforms along the lines that Mr Peña proposes, the same may not yet be true on the street, in the public universities or in much of the press. “Mexico is a country where doctrine and principle matter more than practical considerations and results,” says Enrique Krauze, a historian. The state-run oil monopoly is the sort of sacred cow that could emit a deafening, destabilising moo if Mr Peña tried to tether it. Mexico City already sees an average of 14 protests a day.
The internet is making politics more unpredictable. During the election campaign Mr Peña paid a disastrous visit to a university and fled after being heckled. This gave rise to an anti-Peña student movement calling itself YoSoy132, or “I am the 132nd” (the initial protest was led by 131 students). It is now capable of summoning large crowds via Twitter and Facebook to march against Mr Peña (and often, it seems, for AMLO). During Mexico’s independence celebrations on September 16th anonymous hackers took down several government websites.
So it will not be an easy ride. Mr Krauze remembers that the optimism when the North American Free-Trade Agreement (NAFTA) came into force in 1994 was quickly punctured by the Zapatista uprising in Mexico’s south on New Year’s Day. “We thought we were there in the first world, on the final lap of our historic marathon. Then on January 1st we woke up to the astonishing news of a rebellion in Chiapas,” he says.
Mexico has form in turning triumph to disaster, and could yet do so again. Its economy remains dependent on the fortunes of the United States, and financial crises in Europe make investors jittery. Promised reforms will depend on persuading entrenched interests to accept them. Corruption and bad government, especially at the local level, may cause good initiatives to fall at the last hurdle. And the drug war is by no means over. But Mexico deserves a fresh look—not least because its economy is revving up, as the next article explains.
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发表于 2012-11-24 22:10:28
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