【Native Speaker每日综合训练—33系列】【33-10】文史哲

pennyz

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Part I:   Speaker

Glass half full

【Rephrase 1】



[dialogue:6:07]





Source:6 Minute English
http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/general/sixminute/2014/01/140123_6min_glass_half_full.shtml

pennyz

Part II: Speed

Wealthy Women Can Afford to Reject Marriage, but Poor Women Can't

Higher-income "single ladies" often push back against "patriarchy." But the statistics don't lie: Low-income, unmarried women face significant economic challenges when they stay single.

EMMA GREENJAN 15 2014, 12:21

[Time 2]

In a Wall Street Journal editorial this week, Bush administration press secretary Ari Fleischer wrote that "'marriage inequality' should be at the center of any discussion of why some Americans prosper and others don't." He cited statistics about the vast income disparities between single women and married women, regardless of race, and argued that these gaps would shrink if women stayed in school and waited until marriage to have kids.

At an Atlantic summit on female poverty on Wednesday, the women in the room would have none of that.
"When you say to women, to get out of poverty you should get married, my question to them is how many men you have to marry," said Barbara Ehrenreich, the author of well-known book on low-wage workers, Nickel and Dimed. "Marrying a 10-dollar-an-hour man gets you nowhere, so you'd really have to marry three or four."

There was laughter and applause. Clearly, the mostly female audience approved of her sharp-tongued dismissal of the "just get married" approach to solving income inequality.

But income actually has a significant effect on how women can afford to think about marriage. Often, self-described feminists question the merits of marriage and urge their fellow women to remain independent if they choose. As Carol Gilligan, a New York University professor who sat on a panel with Ehrenreich, put it, "Does anybody know the word patriarchy?"

Taking a stand against patriarchy is much easier if you're well-educated, have a stable income, and live in a community where you could theoretically find an educated, employed man to marry. For poor, uneducated women, especially those who have kids, the question of whether to get married looks a lot different: It's the choice between raising children on one or two incomes, between having someone to help with household chores and child-rearing alone while working multiple jobs.

[305 words]

[Time 3]

And that's the big difference: For a poor woman, deciding whether to get married or not will be a big part of shaping her economic future. For a wealthier woman, deciding whether to get married is a choice about independence, lifestyle, and, at times, "fighting the patriarchy." There's a cognitive dissonance in Ehrenreich's straight-up dismissal of the economic benefits of marriage, because the statistics tell an awkward truth: Financially, married women tend to fare much better than unmarried women.

This topic has been covered extensively in The Atlantic and other publications. But the way this question is covered in the media tells a similar story of the fundamental divide in who can afford to stand against marriage on principle. Take, for example, two articles on marriage in the New York Times: One is about a 35-year-old Argentinian woman who fears that marriage will erode her independence, while the other is about the vast economic disadvantages that poor, single mothers face. The women profiled in the second story aren't worried about being controlled by men or losing their carefree lifestyle; they're worried about how one income can feed, house, and clothe two (or more) people. Wanting a certain lifestyle, or even wanting to fight against societal pressures to marry, are both questions of privilege.

This is not to say that all low-income women should marry, that it's their fault if they're not married, or that marriage is the silver-bullet solution to solving income inequality, as Fleischer and his supporters might argue. But it is important for the resistance against "patriarchy" to be mixed with a recognition of statistical reality: Marriage is good for women economically.

As chanteuse of the single lady, Beyonce is an interesting litmus test for this. She recently wrote an essay about gender inequality in the Shriver Report on women and poverty, and a song on her most recent album contains this sample from a TED talk given by artist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie:

[325 words]

[Time 4]

We teach girls to shrink themselves, to make themselves smaller. We say to girls, 'You can have ambition, but not too much. You should aim to be successful, but not too successful. Otherwise you will threaten the man.' Because I am female, I am expected to aspire to marriage. I am expected to make my life choices always keeping in mind that marriage is the most important. Now marriage can be a source of joy and love and mutual support. But why do we teach girls to aspire to marriage and we don’t teach boys the same?

This is an important question, especially because it frames the cultural pressures surrounding marriage in the right way: Why don't we teach boys that they need to get married, the way we teach this to girls? For the single, poor women (and single, poor men) of the world, this question needs to be accompanied by another: If I choose not to marry, what will be the economic consequences?

"Single ladies" who decide not to get married should be empowered to make that choice and share their perspectives with the world. But women who can comfortably support themselves (and possibly their children) on one income should not assume that low-income women are facing an identical choice.

[212 words]

Source: The Atlantic
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/01/wealthy-women-can-afford-to-reject-marriage-but-poor-women-cant/283097/

Chance, Not Skill, Makes Art Popular

In a slightly different universe, perhaps Salieri would be considered a greater genius than Mozart

By Rose Eveleth

[Time 5]

While people travel around the world to see famous paintings like the Mona Lisa or Guernica, Monet’s Lillies, most people will admit that they’re not entirely sure what separates “good” art  from “great” art. And it might be there isn't much difference, artistically. It may be mostly luck that elevates some pieces of art over others.

“For some essentially random reason, a group of people decided that the thing in question was really good and their attention attracted more attention until there was a herd of people who believed that it was special mostly because all the other people believed that it was, but the successful thing wasn't in fact that special,” writes Alix Spiegel at NPR.

The nature of history makes this kind of thing hard to study empirically. We can’t go back in time and create alternate experimental scenarios. But Spiegel spoke with Matthew Salganik, a professor at Princeton who has spent a lot of time thinking about this problem and has figured out a way to create alternate art histories—not with a time machine, but with a computer. Spiegel explains the plan:

He would create a series of identical worlds online filled with the same pieces of art, then get thousands of people to choose which they liked best.
If the same art rose to the top of every world, then he would know that success was driven by the inherent qualities of that work. If not, he could conclude, success was essentially random.

[248 words]

[Time 6]

Salganik recruited 30,000 teenagers and split them into nine groups, each directed to an identical world of art. Each group of teenagers listened to 48 songs from artists they had never heard of before. When they were done, they could download the ones they liked the best.

In one world, the teenagers listened to the songs and picked their favorites. Done. But in the other eight worlds, the teenagers could see what their friends were choosing to download. Simply being able to see what other people were picking had huge effects on what got popular and what didn’t.

"For example, we had this song 'Lock Down' by the band 52 Metro," Salganik told NPR. "In one world this song came in first; in another world it came in 40th out of 48th. And this was exactly the same song. It's just in these different worlds, history evolved slightly different. There were differences in the beginnings, and then the process of social influence and cumulative advantage sort of magnified those small, random initial differences."

So, in a slightly different universe, maybe Salieri was considered a greater genius than Mozart. The world is full of Marlowe festivals instead of Shakespeare festivals. And some artist you've never heard of, who lived in obscurity, has work hung in the Louvre, with hordes of tourists clamoring for a glimpse.

[224 words]

Source:Smithsonian
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/most-popular-art-popular-mostly-because-chance-not-skill-180949941/

pennyz

Part III: Obstacle

EXTEND JOBLESS BENEFITS NOW!

POSTED BY JOHN CASSIDY

[Paraphrase 7]

The employment report for February, released on Friday morning, was decent enough. The payroll figure, of 175,000 new jobs, was a bit higher than expected, although I wouldn’t attach very much significance to that. Given the statistical margin of error of plus or minus 90,000, it’s not clear that job creation was any different in February than it was in January, which had a revised payroll figure of 129,000.

In any case, the report confirms that employment creation has slowed down over the past three months. From January, 2013, to November, 2013, the payroll figure averaged about 200,000. Since then, the average has been about 130,000. Some of that decline was almost certainly owing to the frigid weather; precisely how much, we don’t know. But as temperatures rise over the next couple of months, the job figures are likely to pick up again. The stock market rose modestly after the report came out, and it’s widely expected that the Federal Reserve will continue its policy of gradually drawing down the amount of money it is pumping into the economy.

That’s the good news, but it wasn’t all positive.

The most shocking number in the report was 3.8 million. That’s the number of Americans who have been out of work for more than six months, and are classified as long-term unemployed. With payrolls rising and the work force expanding a bit, the tally of people who have been unemployed for less than six months—the short-term jobless—stayed at about 10.3 million last month. But the number of long-term jobless rose by 203,000.

That’s alarming for a number of reasons. First, it confirms what we’ve known for a while: there is a core group of jobless Americans, many of them older than the typical worker, who were laid off during the Great Recession and its aftermath and who aren’t sharing in the recovery to the same extent as others. In normal times, the proportion of the unemployed who have been out of work for more than six months is about one-fifth. But it now stands at more than one in three—thirty-seven per cent, to be precise. Even during a recession, or a post-recession period, this isn’t normal. During the slump of 1983, for example, which was a pretty deep one, the proportion of the jobless who had been out of work for more than six months peaked at about twenty-five per cent.

Over the past year, it should be noted, there have been some encouraging signs. Between February, 2013, and January, 2014, as employment growth picked up, the long-term-jobless figure came down by about a million. But the fact that it jumped again last month is deeply worrying, and it confirms what millions of Americans have come to know the hard way: the longer you are out of work, the harder it is to find another job.

Being a member of the long-term unemployed comes with a stigma. Because you haven’t worked in a while, potential employers tend to treat you with suspicion. If our economic policies were rational, let alone caring, they would be designed to help the long-term jobless overcome this stigma and return to work. One possibility would be to extend temporary job subsidies to firms that hire such workers.

Instead of doing that, or anything like it, we are actively punishing the victims. Since the end of December, thanks to deliberate inaction on the part of the Republican-controlled Congress, the long-term unemployed have no longer been eligible for federal unemployment benefits. If they run out of money, their only options are to remortgage their homes, if they own them, or to apply for food stamps.

Earlier this week, Harry Reid, the Senate Majority Leader, tried again to rectify the situation. He put forward a bill that would extend unemployment benefits beyond the six-month limit and make payments retroactive to December 28th, when the previous extension expired. This is Reid’s third attempt this year to do the decent thing. On both previous occasions, the legislation to extend benefits failed to get the sixty votes necessary to overcome a Republican filibuster threat. Even if Reid gets the extra votes he needs this time—which is a possibility—it seems highly unlikely that the Republican-controlled House of Representatives will pass a similar bill.

Will the new jobs report change the political calculus? Let’s hope so. The latest estimates suggest that more than two million unemployed Americans have already lost their eligibility for benefits, and that figure is rising by the week. According to a recent report from the White House’s Council of Economic Advisers, there could be 3.6 million long-term unemployed who have lost their benefits eligibility by the end of 2014. (It won’t reach 3.8 million, the total number of long-term jobless, partly because many people have been out of work for more than a year, which means they wouldn’t qualify even for an extended program.)
The arguments against extending benefits beyond twenty-six weeks are flimsy. One is cost, and the need to reduce the deficit. But the deficit is falling dramatically already. And at an estimated price of about $6.4 billion for three months, or roughly $25 billion per year, the bill for extending jobless benefits is pretty modest.

The other argument that some conservatives make is about incentives: if you allow the unemployed to collect benefits for extended periods, they are less likely to try and find a new job. But here, too, the evidence is lacking. Studies comparing states that have extended jobless benefits to states that haven’t show little difference in how quickly, or slowly, the long-term unemployed return to work. By far the most important factor is the overall rate of hiring, not the level of unemployment benefits.

By now, it should be pretty clear to everybody, even Republicans, that the vast majority of the long-term unemployed aren’t idlers living it up at taxpayers’ expense. They are innocent victims of the Great Recession who would like to return to work but can’t find a job. For Congress to continue to punish them isn’t just a bad policy. It’s a scandal.

[1017 words]

Source:Newyorker
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/johncassidy/2014/03/extend-jobless-benefits-now.html

疏离无罪

终于又有沙发了！！！！！
欢迎回来，瓜瓜

Speaker: People's attitude to life can be changed.State of our mind can not be easily measured.Fundamental driver shapes our personality how optimist or a pessimist we are.Our outlike to life shapes our behavior.

01:43
Income ineuqality affects a lot on women's marriage.Women may have different choices according to their own ability.

01:34
Poor women will consider more about what marriage can bring to economic future.Wealthy women will think more things.The misunderstood idea that marriage is good for women economically should be changed.

01:00
A talk given by  Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.Girls are always taught to aspire to marriage by cultural pressure.And girls should make decisions by themselves.Wealthy women should not assume that poor women are facing the same identical choice.

01:20
People can not separate good art and great art.Most of master pieces were decided by a group of people at first.A experiment was made to study whether the success of art comes from inherent qualities or random.

01:00
The sucess comes from random at the beginning and then the process of social influence and cumulative advantage make them great art.

07:26
Main Idea:federal unemployment benefit shouldn't be reduces and shoube extend
Althogh the data shows that the job market is recovering in February.But the employment creation in February may affected by the weather.It was not all positive now.
The core group of jobless americans are still in trouble.The percentage of them should be one fifth in current time,but now it is 37%.And the longer they are jobless,the harder they get a new job.Long-tern umemplyment may even creat stigma.
At the same time,the government is punishing victims by reducing federal umemployment benefits.More and more long-term jobless people are losing benefits.Some politicans says that benefits make people unwilling to find a new job,but actually no evidence supports this idea.
Long-term jobless people are suffering these difficulties and they are just victims of the great recessioin.Unemployment benefits should be released and extended now.

olivia瓜瓜

楼上太快了吧
Speaker:
The optimist see the opportunity in the difficaulty.
The  pessimist see the diffcaulty in the opportunity.

The altitude is a state of mind,and it is affected by many factors,such as certain circumstance.
In scientific areaal, the altitude has become the hostest topic. We can explore our brain and change our mind from negative to positive.
ANd XX doctor support that the altitude affects our personality, from the behavior ,the emotion ,even  to our life.

The half-empty glass of beer or half-full galss of beer is depend  on your state of mind.

Speed

Time2: 1m49s

The bush administration press hold that the good way to solve the income equality is to get married.

Such appeal are rejected in one feminist summit.

The income is really a problem to chose your marriage, and the more educated and independent can better stand out of the patriarchy.

Time3:1m51s

The poor and low-educated woman worry about the economical future, but the high educated and wealthy woman care about the
independency and life style when thinking about the marriage.

Dissonance 不协调不一致

carefree lifestyle 无忧无虑的生活方式
fare v.经营，过活n.费用

Time4: 1m

We often teach girls not be much ambitious in case to threaten the boys.

Why we aspire the girls to a marriage but never teach the boys the importanc e of the marriage.

Time5: 1m13s

We often appreciate the famous art piece, but we cant separate the good art form the great art.

The success of the art is from the real attraction or just the random lucky.

这个话题挺有趣的，我曾经就想过像我这样一俗人去看那些艺术作品，不都一样吗？些伟大的作品是因为作品捧红了人还是人捧红了作品。

Time6：1m8s

The experiment show that the same song are treated differently through

the very many cultural and random factors.

Obstacle: 6m06s

逻辑结构超级清晰的一篇文章。

Employment report show that the employment are affected by the rigid weather， and as the weather became warm the hire rate goes up.

But it is not totally positive.The bad situation is the long-term jobless issue.

It has not decrease after the great economic depression.

And it means that the longer you cant get a job, the harder you find a job.

Any policy like the long-term jobless benefits can reverse the situation.  

The argument that the long-term jobless benefits  intensify for the deficit is flimsy, because the benefits is moderate.

The argument that the benefits will spoil the jobless people also lack evidence.

The long-term jobless workers are the victims of great depression.   

     

xiaofan0205

今天这么早！

Speaker:
In today's program, the two hosts talk about optimism and pessimism. Let's say that there is half glass of water, the pessimistic people will think it is half empty, while the optimistic people will see it is half full. Scientists who study inside our head indicate that the fundamental drive of the point of view is our character.

Time2: 2'36"
Time3: 2'32"
Time4: 1'17"
Income actually has a significant effect on how women can afford to think about marriage. When wealthier women think marriage as a choice about independence, lifestyle and at times "fighting the patriarchy", the poorer woman just worried about how one income can feed, house, and clothe two people. The high-income women should not assume that low-income women are facing the indentical choice.

Time5: 1'34"
Time6: 1'36"
Most people can't tell the difference between good art and great art. It may be mostly luck that elevates some pieces of art over others. A scientist figures out a way to create alternate art histories with computer and proves that the process of social influence and cumulative advantage sort of magified those small, random initial difference in the beginings.

Obstacle: 7'39"
The payroll figure which released on Friday was a bit higher than expected. It is a good news, but we should pay more attention to the number of Americans who have been out of work for more than six month.
Our economic policies would be designed to help the long-term jobless, but instead, we are actively punishing the victims because we think that if you allow the unemployed to collect benefits for extended periods, they are less likely to try and find a new job.

Given the statistical margin of error of plus or minus 90,000  给定的统计误差正负90000
food stamps 粮票，食品救济券
unemployment benefits 失业救济金

FakeGloria

Speaker

They aretalking about being an optimist or a pessimist. Our personalities are a complexinteraction of character traits that affect behavior, emotions and ultimatelythe lives we lead. And one of the fundamental drivers is how optimistic orpessimistic we are.

Time2 1’37

Income has a significant effect on how women can affordto think about marriage. Wealthy women canafford to reject marriage, but poor women can't

Time3 1’43

The statistics show that married women tend tofare much better than unmarried women. The examples indicate that marriage isgood for women economically.

Time4 1’03

Why do we teach girls to aspire to marriage and wedon’t teach boys the same? Low-income, unmarriedwomen face significant economic challenges when they stay single.

Time5 1’09

Mostpeople decided that the thing in question was really good and their attentionattracted more attention until there was a herd of people who believed that itwas special mostly because all the other people believed that it was, but thesuccessful thing wasn't in fact that special. Spiegel did a survey about that.

Time6 1’24

The surveyshows that in a slightlydifferent universe, maybe Salieri was considered a greater genius than Mozart. Therewere differences in the beginnings, and then the process of social influenceand cumulative advantage sort of magnified those small, random initialdifferences.

Obstacle 6’43

Thereport confirms that employment creation has slowed down From January, 2013, toNovember, 2013. There were 3.8 million Americans who have been out of work formore than six months. There is a core group of jobless Americans who underwent GreatRecession didn’t recover from that. The vast majority of the long-termunemployed aren’t idlers living it up at taxpayers’ expense. They are innocentvictims of the Great Recession who would like to return to work but can’t finda job.

f0070515

占坑~~~~~~~~~~~~
speed
time2 2:11
discussion of marriage inequality
income actually has ag significant effect on how women can afford to think about marriage.
time3 2:05
for a poor woman getting marriage will be a big part of shaping her economic future
time4 1"05
teach girls to aspire to marriage
time5 1:20
the question that great arts were sussess by the inherent qualities  or random
time6
art succeed by random
Obstacle 5"04
the employment report for February was decent enough.
employment creation has slow down
there are increasing number of Americans who have been out of work for more than six months
the reason of alarming
Harry Reid put forward a bill that would extend unemployment benefit
the overall rate of hiring was low
the vast majority of the long-term unemployed are not idlers living it up at taxpayers' expense

guagua13

还有首页！谢谢penny～

Speaker
whereas a pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity, an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.
scientists are trying to find out if our feelings can be changed from negative to positive.

Speed
time2 1:55:95 305
patriarchy 父系社会
It's much easier for women who are well-educated, have a stable income, and live in good community to stand against patriarchy than for those who are poor and uneducated.
time3 1:54:17 325
statistical reality: marriage is good for women economically.
time4 1:07:78 212
why don't we teach boys to aspire to marriage?
time5 1:25:89 248
It may be mostly luck that elevates some pieces of art over others. A computer can be used to decide whether success was essentially random.
time6 1:30:42 224
Social influence magnified small, random initial differences.
magnify 放大，夸大

Obstacle 6:33:45 1017
3.8 million Americans are classified as long-term unemployed. The longer you're out of work, the harder it is to find another job.
Harry Reid put forward a bill that would extend unemployment benefits and make payments retroactive to Dec. 28th, but it seems very unlikely that the Republican-controlled House of Representatives (众议院) will pass a similar bill.
The bill for extending unemployment benefits is pretty modest at an estimated price of about $25 billion a year.
The vast majority of the long-term unemployed are not living at taxpayers' expense. They are innocent victims of the Great Recession who want to return to work but can't find a job.

cherry6891

            

Obstacle 8:32

The research of long-time jobless and short-time jobless people--the percentage of long-time unemployment has increased during the years--many people were laid off during the Great Recession and its aftermath but can not recovery to the same extent as others--the argument to treat long-time unemployment--H put forward that extend unemployment benefits beyond the sic-month--some conservatives made it incentives:extend period of benefit will make them less likely to find a job.--conclusion: they are victim of Great depression not idlers living up to taxpayer’s expense

Article2

23  5:03 argument about “just get married ” approach to solve income inequality: --Marriage of poor woman can sharp their economic future,while for wealthier woman,marriage is a choice about independence and lifestyle.

4 1:20 the different educations for boys and girls.We only teach girl to shrink themselves to be smaller and pretend to aspire to marriage

Article 3 3;33

--Author put forward that mostly luck that elevates some pieces of art over others.

--then an experiment to approve his idea: students in different world choose various “so called” good songs. What’s more, a top popular song in one group only ranked 48th in another world.