【每日阅读训练第四期——速度越障19系列】【19-05】文史哲

kudoucliff

本帖精华送给Kudoucliff对其推荐文章的中英文注释，以及热心回答队友们的阅读疑难。详见“回帖推荐”。 by Iamyingjie~

Dear all,

罗同学杀T归来，继续为小分队服务！
今天的Time 1、2、3是同一篇文章；第4、5是同一篇文章。
看不懂的同学请看第33、34楼有楼主的中文说明，第31楼有英文说明……建议大家遇到读不懂的文章还是一定要精读到懂为止呀……虽然很辛苦但是收获很大的啊～～

Speed


【Time 1】

WEEKEND READING: INTERNET CRIME SLEUTHS, CELEBRITY PSYCHICS, EUROVISION’S HOPE

The Internet is supposedly the great leveler—a universal space without regard for physical boundaries or strata. This claim is half-illustrated by Kevin Morris at The Daily Dot in his story about Zhu Ling, a Chinese student who was poisoned in 1995 in an unsolved case that recently resurfaced as a popular cause among activists and truth-seekers on the Chinese Web. Morris writes that Zhu’s story “has straddled and defined two ends of the Internet revolution, connecting two decades, two continents, and two generations.” On one end of the bridge we are in 1995, Zhu is a promising young university student who falls gravely ill for mysterious reasons. Through the nascent avenues of the young Internet, one of Zhu’s friends posts a call for help on a message board and physicians from around the world help to reach a correct diagnosis—an early triumph of crowdsourcing. On the other end of the bridge, we are in the present, where online sleuths swarm social media, search tools, and databases to find Zhu’s college roommate, whom many believe was guilty of the poisoning, but got off unpunished because her family was well-connected. Morris’s story traverses the span into the free-for-all of the modern web, with all its advantages and its liabilities. Evan Osnos recently wrote about the Zhu case on our News Desk blog, where he discusses the “unwritten rules” that often set Chinese protocol and which so infuriate activists. But, as Morris’s story illustrates, it remains to be seen whether the rule-less Web can achieve enough accuracy and power to change subverted rules into new realities.
(265)



【Time 2】

Off-the-books investigation was a theme this week, although the vigilante impulse took on some very different, and darker, casts. The New York Times had a story on a retired N.Y.P.D. detective named Louis Scarcella whose cases are coming under review after accusations that he made free use of bad witnesses and falsified evidence throughout his career. Through detailed reporting, the authors pull together a portrait of a real-life Dirty Harry who made his own rules and set his own bars of justice. (The piece also brought to mind Pauline Kael’s scathing 1974 review of “Magnum Force,” in which she calls Clint Eastwood “a tall, cold cod” and skewers Dirty Harry for its “fascist medievalism.” A hatchet job worth revisiting for its own sake.)

Another loose-cannon crime solver appears in Jon Ronson’s 2007 piece in the Guardian on celebrity psychic Sylvia Browne, which resurfaced after the escape of the Cleveland kidnapping victims. When the piece first appeared, Browne had recently come under fire for telling a kidnapped boy’s parents that their son was dead, only to have him turn up, alive and well, four years later. Similarly, Browne told Amanda Berry’s family that Berry was dead in 2004. Browne wasn’t talking to the media after the 2007 embarrassment, so Ronson signed up for a cruise for Browne fans where she appeared as a guest speaker. As you can imagine, Ronson’s piece is dryly hilarious, but it also handles delicately the deep damage that can be done by fraudulent prognostications—as Ronson tweeted last week, “It’s not about psychics. It’s about cruelty.”
(260)

【Time 3】

For something slightly less dispiriting, or at least something with fewer homicides, check out “The Paradox of the Proof,” by Caroline Chen, which starts with a historic breakthrough in mathematics, and ends with a lot of head-scratching and resentment. The A.B.C. Conjecture is a famous unproved theory about the relationship between the multiplicative and additive properties of numbers. (If you want to know more, read the piece, where Chen lucidly explains the problem for those of us who haven’t touched an exponent since high school.) The conjecture deals with the basic nature of numbers and if it’s proved, says one Princeton mathematician, “it will be the most powerful thing we have.” Enter Shinichi Mochizuki: a math genius who quietly authors a series of papers that he says prove the conjecture. He posts them on the Internet and, for all intents and purposes, disappears. The problem is that none of his peers and colleagues can understand what he’s written; it’s so dense and referential that nobody yet knows whether it proves anything at all. (The piece appears on a new site, Project Wordsworth, where, Radiohead-like, a group of young journalists is experimenting with the notion that people will pay fair prices for high-quality journalism. You can find the rest of their inaugural stories—which look similarly interesting and intelligent—on their home page.)

Finally, I loved James Meek’s report from Cyprus for the London Review of Books, in which he lays out the series of historical and structural problems that led to the country’s financial implosion. Along with this wide-angle view of the situation, he explains the cultural and logistical realities that left ordinary citizens vulnerable in the crisis, and he tells the stories of people who have absorbed the impact of the collapse. It’s an important piece, told thoroughly and humanely, although it gives a bleak view for the foreseeable future of the European continent.
(315)

Extension

But that’s why there’s the Eurovision Song Contest, which takes place this weekend. Although the pan-European singing competition usually attracts more viewers than the Super Bowl, it’s not always easy to find a place to watch it in the U.S. Luckily, Anthony Lane wrote about the contest for this magazine in 2010. I don’t remember that last time a magazine piece made me giggle as much as Lane’s descriptions of the “perspiring ambition and dewy innocence” of this institution of old-world camp, where fresh-faced artists perform songs with titles like “Diggi-loo Diggi-ley” as a matter of national honor. Here is an assertion, Lane observes, of European diversity and unity that has lasted half a century. Banks may fail and currencies crumble, but while there is a Turkish back-up dancer sawing herself out of a robot costume, or a troupe of Finnish gargoyles gesturing mildly and singing in stilted English, or a Belarusian choir sprouting butterfly wings on an out-of-key key-change, there is hope.
(163)

【Time 4 】

Argument of Slavery
SINCE no man has a natural authority over his fellow, and force creates no right, we must conclude that conventions form the basis of all legitimate authority among men.
If an individual, says Grotius, can alienate his liberty and make himself the slave of a master, why could not a whole people do the same and make itself subject to a king? There are in this passage plenty of ambiguous words which would need explaining; but let us confine ourselves to the word alienate. To alienate is to give or to sell. Now, a man who becomes the slave of another does not give himself; he sells himself, at the least for his subsistence: but for what does a people sell itself? A king is so far from furnishing his subjects with their subsistence that he gets his own only from them; and, according to Rabelais, kings do not live on nothing. Do subjects then give their persons on condition that the king takes their goods also? I fail to see what they have left to preserve.
It will be said that the despot assures his subjects civil tranquillity. Granted; but what do they gain, if the wars his ambition brings down upon them, his insatiable avidity, and the vexations conduct of his ministers press harder on them than their own dissensions would have done? What do they gain, if the very tranquillity they enjoy is one of their miseries? Tranquillity is found also in dungeons; but is that enough to make them desirable places to live in? The Greeks imprisoned in the cave of the Cyclops lived there very tranquilly, while they were awaiting their turn to be devoured.
(280)


【Time 5】

To say that a man gives himself gratuitously, is to say what is absurd and inconceivable; such an act is null and illegitimate, from the mere fact that he who does it is out of his mind. To say the same of a whole people is to suppose a people of madmen; and madness creates no right.
Even if each man could alienate himself, he could not alienate his children: they are born men and free; their liberty belongs to them, and no one but they has the right to dispose of it. Before they come to years of discretion, the father can, in their name, lay down conditions for their preservation and well-being, but he cannot give them irrevocably and without conditions: such a gift is contrary to the ends of nature, and exceeds the rights of paternity. It would therefore be necessary, in order to legitimise an arbitrary government, that in every generation the people should be in a position to accept or reject it; but, were this so, the government would be no longer arbitrary.
To renounce liberty is to renounce being a man, to surrender the rights of humanity and even its duties. For him who renounces everything no indemnity is possible. Such a renunciation is incompatible with man's nature; to remove all liberty from his will is to remove all morality from his acts. Finally, it is an empty and contradictory convention that sets up, on the one side, absolute authority, and, on the other, unlimited obedience. Is it not clear that we can be under no obligation to a person from whom we have the right to exact everything? Does not this condition alone, in the absence of equivalence or exchange, in itself involve the nullity of the act? For what right can my slave have against me, when all that he has belongs to me, and, his right being mine, this right of mine against myself is a phrase devoid of meaning?
Grotius and the rest find in war another origin for the so-called right of slavery. The victor having, as they hold, the right of killing the vanquished, the latter can buy back his life at the price of his liberty; and this convention is the more legitimate because it is to the advantage of both parties.
(329)


Obstacle

Wine Drinkers of the World, Unite

In 2008, the late Christopher Hitchens wrote an inspired rant about restaurant waiters pouring your wine for you. Five years later, we appear to be no closer to eradicating this bizarre, impractical custom. With that in mind, we've reprinted the essay below, one of many from Slate included in Hitchens' compilation, Arguably.
The other night, I was having dinner with some friends in a fairly decent restaurant and was at the very peak of my form as a wit and raconteur. But just as, with infinite and exquisite tantalizations, I was approaching my punch line, the most incredible thing happened. A waiter appeared from nowhere, leaned right over my shoulder and into the middle of the conversation, seized my knife and fork, and started to cut up my food for me. Not content with this bizarre behavior, and without so much as a by-your-leave, he proceeded to distribute pieces of my entree onto the plates of the other diners.
No, he didn't, actually. What he did instead was to interrupt the feast of reason and flow of soul that was our chat, lean across me, pick up the bottle of wine that was in the middle of the table, and pour it into everyone's glass. And what I want to know is this: How did such a barbaric custom get itself established, and why on earth do we put up with it?
There are two main ways in which a restaurant can inflict bad service on a customer. The first is to keep you hanging about and make it hard to catch the eye of the staff. ("Why are they called waiters?" inquired my son when he was about 5. "It's we who are doing all the waiting.") The second way is to be too intrusive, with overlong recitations of the "specials" and too many oversolicitous inquiries. A cartoon in The New Yorker once showed a couple getting ready for bed, with the husband taking a call and keeping his hand over the receiver. "It's the maitred' from the place we had dinner. He wants to know if everything is still all right."
The vile practice of butting in and pouring wine without being asked is the very height of the second kind of bad manners. Not only is it a breathtaking act of rudeness in itself, but it conveys a none-too-subtle and mercenary message: Hurry up and order another bottle. Indeed, so dulled have we become to the shame and disgrace of all this that I have actually seen waiters, having broken into the private conversation and emptied the flagon, ask insolently whether they should now bring another one. Again, imagine this same tactic being applied to the food.
Not everybody likes wine as much as I do. Many females, for example, confine themselves to one glass per meal or even half a glass. It pains me to see good wine being sloshed into the glasses of those who have not asked for it and may not want it and then be left standing there barely tasted when the dinner is over. Mr. Coleman, it was said, made his fortune not from the mustard that was consumed but from the mustard that was left on the plate. Restaurants ought not to inflict waste and extravagance on their patrons for the sake of padding out the bill. This, too, is a very extreme form of rudeness.
The expense of the thing, in other words, is only an aspect of the presumption of it. It completely usurps my prerogative if I am a host. ("Can I refill your glass? Try this wine—I think you may care for it.") It also tends to undermine me as a guest, since at any moment when I try to sing for my supper, I may find an unwanted person lunging carelessly into the middle of my sentence. If this person fills glasses unasked, he is a boor as described above. If he asks permission of each guest in turn—as he really ought to do, when you think about it—then he might as well pull up a chair and join the party. The nerve of it!
To return to the question of why we endure this: I think it must have something to do with the snobbery and insecurity that frequently accompany the wine business. A wine waiter is or can be a bit of a grandee, putting on considerable airs that may intimidate those who know little of the subject. If you go into a liquor store in a poor part of town, you will quite often notice that the wine is surprisingly expensive, because it is vaguely assumed that somehow it ought to cost more. And then there is simple force of custom and habit—people somehow grant restaurants the right to push their customers around in this outrageous way.
Well, all it takes is a bit of resistance. Until relatively recently in Washington, it was the custom at diplomatic and Georgetown dinners for the hostess to invite the ladies to withdraw, leaving the men to port and cigars and high matters of state. And then one evening in the 1970s, at the British Embassy, the late Katharine Graham refused to get up and go. There was nobody who felt like making her, and within a day, the news was all over town. Within a very short time, everybody had abandoned the silly practice. I am perfectly well aware that there are many graver problems facing civilization, and many grosser violations of human rights being perpetrated as we speak. But this is something that we can all change at a stroke. Next time anyone offers to interrupt your conversation and assist in the digestion of your meal and the inflation of your check, be very polite but very firm and say that you would really rather not.
(976)

kudoucliff

（1）1:35
（2）1:50
（3）2:12
The primary purpose of the passage is to solidify the claim that Internet is equal to everyone, without regards for physical boundaries or social strata. The author cites several examples: the first one is Zhu Ling's case in which Zhu suffered from mysterious disease and was gravely damaged. One of her friends used the nascent avenue of Internet to ask for the reason and finally got the answer. Recently, Internet sleuths warm the topic with search tools to find Zhu's roommate, who was suspicious for the poisoning but got off unpunished because of her well-connected family; the second one is about a detective using falsified evidence and bad witness through his career; the third one is about an embarrassment, during which Browne told a kidnapped boy's family that the boy had been dead; the third one is a non-crime one that a professor used his method to prove ABC conjecture, putting his article on the Internet, but nobody could understand him.
（4）1:24，The primary purpose of the passage is to illustrate the author's point that men who alienate himself to be slave for others cannot be said to own rights; actually people living under the sovereign of a king get nothing.
（5）2:10，The primary purpose of the passage is to substantiate that a person has no rights after being sold; thus treating the person as a people and the person bought the people as the government, we know that we cannot tolerate an arbitrary government and that people should have position to accept or reject the government.
（6）5:45，The primary purpose of the passage is to discuss the wine culture which the author once thought barbaric and then explored why it was tolerated. The author used metaphors to illustrate how rude the behavior of the waiter was. Also, he analyzed how the customers and hosts would feel being treated by so. Moreover, he listed several reasons led to such problems, including the price of wine. Finally, he believed the behavior could be stopped, citing an example of a lady refusing to attend an invitation.

kudoucliff

adamzjw 发表于 2013-5-20 19:40
1:58
2:14
2:50

Dear,

用中文讲解一下啊……time1、2、3综合起来讲的就是Internet是一个great leveler，就是对大家都很平等……然后引用了朱令案，说很久以前她的同学用Internet搞清楚了她的病情，很久以后（现在）网络侦探（sleuths）开始查她的室友……然后举了两个其它的例子，一个说有个侦探一生都在用伪证来工作，另一个说有一个人告诉那些孩子被强奸的家庭他们的孩子死掉了。这些事儿都被曝光了，成为丑闻……然后又说了一个非犯罪的，有个教授把自己对ABC conjecture的证明放在网上，大家都看不懂……每个点都在紧扣主旨——网络很平等，很open，大家都可以参与。

kudoucliff

abc791201064 发表于 2013-5-20 10:53
1.39 The ineternet now creats a place in which there is no stratefy and bound. As for the Zhuling Ca ...

Dear，

第四篇就是讲嘛：权利是生下来就有的，一个人把自己卖了（alienate）就没有权利啦，把一个人扩大到一群人，这一群人把自己卖给king，那么是不是也没有权利啦？但是有人说king给了他的臣民们很多东西啊，但是作者认为king是要靠着这些东西活才把他们给臣民们的……然后又讲暴君也给臣民tranquility啊，但是有tranquility就一定好吗？希腊人住在独眼巨人的洞里面也很tranquil啊，但是他们只是在tranquil中等着被吃掉而已……
第五篇就接着讲：一个人不可以卖掉自己，卖自己的契约是无效的而且荒唐的；如果一个人非要把自己卖了，那他不能卖他的孩子吧？因为这种权利属于他孩子自己……但是政府呢，不仅可以鱼肉臣民，还可以鱼肉以未来为代价满足现有的需求，这是不可以的，所以civilians一定要有一个position去接受或拒绝政府的行为……放弃自由就是放弃权利，这是跟人类的本性相违背的，放弃权利也就放弃了义务，一个没有义务的人也不对其行为负责……如果我的奴隶属于我，那他有什么权利是我不可以侵犯的呢？所以有的人探讨的奴隶的rights是不存在的……

悬崖边的人鱼

读不懂啊！我已经脑残了啊……………………救命啊！我该怎么办！着急啊！看了两遍都不懂在讲什么啊苍天！我是有多笨！

wensd1111

1 A 01:57
2 A 01:59
3 A 02:20
4 A 01:04
5 A 01:43
6 A 02:18
7 A 06:43
1.the difference between several socialogist
2,the interuption the author expreimenced.
3,the two way you might deal with the waiter in the restrurant
3,the analyse of these two points
5,give perpor adivice to solve the problem

vangie1105

SPEED
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OBSTACLE 7’51”

墩墩大人

02:09:9
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06;43;0

wangjue1102

2’10’’
The internet has proved a great leveler against the inequality in the world. It can be utilized, for example, to tackle the unwritten rules lurking in Chinese practices. The Zhu’s case, which happened in 1955, has resurfaced and has aroused sufficient public attention to finally settle the unsettled case through crowdsourcing etc. However, the author mentioned, the Internet is still not in a position to bring drastic changes to the real world yet.  

2’23’’
The indiscriminate use of influence of such public figures as detectives or psychic has caused severe consequences.

2’30’’
The fact that a powerful conjecture has been claimed to be proved cannot be verified since no one can understand the paper in question.
The report is wide-angled and highly-acclaimed but gives a bleak view of the European continent.


2’28’’
An individual can alienate his liberty and make himself a slave to exchange for subsistence. But it is not the case when it comes to the king, who is not in a position to furnish his subjects with subsistence and even has to live on his subjects. Someone may argue that the subjects can reap from civil tranquility which could to some extent be miseries.

2’44’’     totally couldn’t get the gist at all at first !!!!!   T T
No indemnity is available once a man waives his liberty and such renunciation is incompatible with man’s nature, only leading to unlimited obedience.


OB
6’59’’

Why we have to endure the unseemly behaviors conducted by waiters during dinner.
The author introduced the issue by describing a scenario happened to him. Then the author explores the reasons and suggests simple resistance when things like that happens again.

这几篇好难啊楼主
看了好久> <    真的后面一些没有你的帮忙话头大死我呐

9号球

imer1: the story of zhuling reveals that the Internet is a great leveler,which connect two decades,two continent and two generations.On one end of the bridge zhuling is a promising university student but got mysteriously poisoned,one the other end of the bridge people of the present concern about her case on the Internet,trying to find out whether her suspicious but unpunished roomate was guilty.

timer2: 看了中文解释又看了英文解释才懂= =
the socond one is about a detective using falsified evidence and bad witness through his career;another crime is an embarrassment,during which B told a kidnapped boy's parents that their child had been dead.

timer3:a mathmetician CC put The A.B.C. Conjecture on the Internet and no one could understand.

the primary purpose of the passage is to solidify the claim that Internet is equal to everyone,without regards for physical boundaries or social strata.
timer4:  to alienate is to sell himself,people who alienate to a king actually get nothing
timer5:  a man who gratuitous sell himself is absurd,and even if he alienate himself he cannot alienate his children.the government should not be arbitrary and people should be in a position to accept or reject it

zxppx

1.1-41
From the Zhu case, we can see that the internet has a big effect on human's life. Twenty years ago, Zhu who became very ill was a university student, her classmates helped ask for help on the internet. However, now her classmates's information can even be collected on the internet. Some people think that the internet still need to be improved to protect individual rights.
2.1-52
There are several crimes talked in the article. Someone is about kidnaping, while another is a person who just used his own view to live.  
3.2-06
Chen figures out a mathmatic problem about some numbers and publishes his result on the internet. However, his colleagues and others cannot understand why he writes. What's more, the website has many articles, some of them very interesting. In the end, the author points out that he likes an article, which shows the problem of citizens during the financial cirsis, even though it leaves a bleak  part in the future.
4.2-05
A man sells hiself to the other, while king has many people who work for him and he can get benefits from those people.
5.2-37
Even though a man can sell himself to a master, he cannot harm his children's right. Only those children themselves can determine their rights. Then the author talks about the arbitary. A slave should have the ability to buy his own liberty in order to choose his own life.  
6.6-18
In the beginning the author points out that when he was enjoying food with his friends, a waitress interupt him and pour the wine to everyone's glass without asking. The author feels very upset about he rude action. Then he suggests that there are two kinds of rudeness in a restaurant. Actually, the waitress wants to urge customers drink more wine, so he can get more money. However, the author feels very wasteful that some women do not like wine, while they are poured the wine, so the treasure will be wasted. In the end the author suggests that next time when we were in the situation, we should reject the action politely.

君君爱TS

1:27
1:50
1:61
2:16
2:29
5:49

1 para1 中国的投毒事件，二十年网络的跨越。讨论了网络在中国社会已存在的风俗制度的影响
para2 美国的一个事件
para3
2 哲学文章
3 waiter倒酒对conversation进行了打扰
两种不同的waiter：1 过于迟钝 让别人waiting 2 自高自傲 未经允许打断别人谈话给人倒酒
分析原因：自古以来都觉得酒是一个很高级的东东，卖的很贵。没有看到很多人其实不喜欢饮酒
人们对于陈规的固守，举了英国女王不离席让大家终于勇敢离开饭桌的例子。
呼吁 以后礼貌而坚定的告诉waiter不必过来了

yunqifan

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