【Native Speaker每日综合训练—34系列】【34-04】文史哲

pennyz

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Part I: Speaker

Ted: The Web as a city

[Rephrase 1]

Dialogue:16:31

Source: TED
http://www.ted.com/talks/steven_johnson_on_the_web_as_a_city?language=en

pennyz

Part II: Speed

Finally, a Social Media App That Helps You Avoid People You Don’t Want to See

Cloak warns you when people you don't want to see get too near

By Colin Schultz

[Time 2]

Social media tools have given us an astounding number of ways to meet like-minded people, locate love interests and harness the power of serendipity. Smartphones in hand, we're now always reachable, any time, anywhere—ready for impromptu hangs, tweetups, check-ins and late night Tinder trysts.But, maybe, sometimes it'd be nice to have a day in which the opposite was true—in which you could go out and avoid seeing anyone you know.
A new app, called Cloak, uses all those Foursquare check-ins and GPS-tagged Instagram photos your friends are pumping out to tell you where they are... so you can steer clear. The app's best feature, via the Washington Post: “You can casually check the map, or — for exes, chatty neighbors and other undesirables — “flag” them to receive an alert when they pass within a preset radius.”
     Aside from being a potentially great tool for misanthropes everywhere, an app like Cloak could actually be quite useful in terms of undoing some of the damage you did with all the other social media apps, like dodging the creep you met on OkCupid, or, more seriously, the person who likes to harass you on Twitter.

194 words

Source:Smithsonian
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/finally-social-media-app-helps-you-avoid-people-you-dont-want-see-180950232/?no-ist

Not Everyone Thinks Extreme Happiness Is an Ideal State of Being

Being happy—but not too happy—is the safest route.

By Rachel Nuwer

[Time 3]

In the U.S., reminders to be happy accost us wherever we go. Right now, you can hear that meassage loudest and clearest whenever you turn on the radio and Pharrell Williams' annoyingly catchy "Happy" starts playing, as, inevitably, it will. Even if you don't listen to the radio, "Happy" is inescapable. Cute dogs, the U.N., Star Wars characters—it seems like everyone is in on this.
     Pharrell didn't invent this sentiment, of course: America has long been a land rife with smiley face logos and refrains of "Don't worry, be happy!" The underlying message seems to be that if you're not happy, there is something wrong with you. Psychologists from Victoria University of Wellington recently explained this phenomena in a paper:
     A common view in contemporary Western culture is that personal happiness is one of the most important values in life. For example, in American culture it is believed that failing to appear happy is cause for concern. These cultural notions are also echoed in contemporary Western psychology (including positive psychology and much of the research on subjective well-being).

      However, as the researchers go on to point out, for many people and cultures across the world, this smiley outlook is not the norm. "For some individuals, happiness is not a supreme value," they write. "In fact, some individuals across cultures are averse to various kinds of happiness for several different reasons."

Take people living in the Middle East, near Iran, for example. If things get too good for them, traditional superstitions state that the evil eye will be cast upon them, and they will fall into misfortune. Being happy—but not too happy—is therefore the safest route.

In countries such as Japan, on the other hand, individual pursuit of happiness can be seen as being at odds with the good of society, and people who put their own feelings first risk being perceived as selfish. Even in the West, the authors found, some people share a similar mentality, feeling that people who are overly happy come across as boring and shallow.
      So next time some guy tells you to smile or asks you why you're not being chirpy enough, feel free to inform him that plenty of people have an aversion to extreme happiness. There's nothing flawed or out of the ordinary about that. And if that wipes the smile off his face, well, good.

396 words

Source:Smithsonian
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/not-everyone-thinks-extreme-happiness-ideal-state-being-180950223/

The Most Important Argument About the Job Market Heats Up

By Jordan Weissmann

[Time 4]

There are 3.8 million Americans who have been out of work for 27 weeks or more. These are the country’s long-term unemployed, as defined by the Department of Labor. And right now, they’re the subject of the most important ongoing argument about the state of the job market.
      In recent months, a growing chorus ofeconomists and writers have concluded that “the long-term jobless don’t matter to the economy,” as Wonkblog’s Ylan Muiput it in a recent headline. At least, they don’t when it comes to issues such as inflation and pay growth. (I’m guessing most everyone agrees that their personal suffering matters a great deal, and that the world would generally be better off if they were working). The idea is that these unlucky millions are so far from employers’ radars, and so unlikely to ever hold a steady job again, that their presence no longer influences rest of the labor market. Should the economy heat up, businesses will start paying out higher wages to keep or poach workers who already have jobs before they dip into the pool of people who have been out of the game for more than six months. And if wages escalate, so too could inflation.
      The Atlantic’s Matt O’Brien has dubbed the proponents of this argument “the new inflation hawks.” If they’re correct, the Federal Reserve may need to raise interest rates sooner rather than later to prevent prices from rising, even though it would cool down the economy while the long-term jobless are still struggling. The hawks note that short-term unemployment is roughly back to normal, and real hourly wages are inching up. Inflation, they say, could be just around the corner.  
      In other words: The Federal Reserve probably can’t help the long-term unemployed to begin with, nor should it risk trying.

299 words

[Time 5]

So far, Fed Chair Janet Yellen isn’t buying the theory. "With respect to the issue of short-term unemployment, and its being more relevant for inflation and a better measure of the labor market, I've seen research along those lines," she told reporters at a press conference Wednesday. "I think it would be tremendously premature to adopt any notion that says that that is an accurate read on either how inflation is determined or what constitutes slack in the labor market."
Translation: Yellen isn’t ready to write off the long-term unemployed yet. And she may be holding out hope that those who've left the labor force altogether will one day return to the job hunt, too.
     Yesterday, however, the hawks received a big intellectual boost, courtesy of a new paper debuted at Brookings by Princeton economist and Obama advisor Alan Krueger. It is a grim document, to say the least. Krueger and his co-authors, Princeton's Judd Kramer and David Cho, suggest that many of the long-term unemployed may never work again and “tentatively.conclude” that, as a group, they “exert relatively little pressure on the economy.” Wonkblog’s Mui has already written a solid summary, andThe New York Times’ Binyamin Applebaum has a very useful take. But here are three of the key points:

218 words

[Time 6]

1. The overall unemployment rate doesn’t seem to affect inflation. That depends on the short-term unemployment rate. Some economists have argued that the traditional relationship between unemployment and inflation, known as the Phillips Curve, fell apart after the recession. But Krueger and his coauthors find that once you pull the long-term unemployed out of the equation and focus only on the short-term unemployed, it works again like new. The same goes for the relationship between wages and unemployment. But why? That brings us to…

2. The long-term unemployed rarely return to work. Between 2008 and 2012, the authors found that, after 15 months, only 11 percent of the long-term unemployed were back in a full-time, steady job (as shown in the Brookings graphic below). This is in keeping with research that has found employers ignore job applicants who have been out of work for an extended period. But the problem may go deeper. The long-term unemployed, the authors write, seem to be on the margins of the labor market, and have difficulty sustaining employment once they find it. Many ultimately lose interest in work altogether.

3. Worse yet, even a stronger economy might not help their predicament.The paper finds that the long-term unemployed don’t fare much better in states with low overall joblessness than they do in states with high overall joblessness. Regardless of the health of the local economy, they’re about equally likely to find a new job as they are to leave the labor force entirely.

Krueger & Co. caution that “only time will tell” whether they are right about the relationship between wages, inflation, and employment. Still, the hawks are bound to cite their work as proof that the labor market really is tightening and that there is little the Federal Reserve can do for the long-term jobless.
I also doubt it will settle the argument. So for now, it’s worth remembering why the stakes of the debate are so high. We can all probably agree that Congress is not going to step in and do something dramatic to help the unemployed find work. That makes the Fed is more or less their last hope. If it can’t help, or decides not to try, nobody will.

377 words

Source:Slate
http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2014/03/21/krueger_on_long_term_unemployment_the_most_important_argument_about_the.html

pennyz

Part III: Obstacle

Paul Ryan was right — poverty is a cultural problem

By George F. Will, Published: March 22

[Paraphrase 7]
     Critics of Rep. Paul Ryan’s remarks about cultural factors in the persistence of poverty are simultaneously shrill and boring. Their predictable minuet of synthetic indignation demonstrates how little liberals have learned about poverty or changed their rhetorical repertoire in the last 49 years.

Ryan spoke of a “tailspin of culture, in our inner cities in particular, of men not working and just generations of men not even thinking about working or learning the value and the culture of work,” adding: “There’s a real culture problem here.” This brought down upon Ryan the usual acid rain of accusations — racism, blaming the victims, etc. He had sauntered into the minefield that a more experienced Daniel Patrick Moynihan — a liberal scholar who knew the taboos of his tribe — had tiptoed into five years before Ryan was born.

A year from now, there surely will be conferences marking the 50th anniversary of what is now known as the Moynihan Report, a.k.a. “The Negro Family: The Case for National Action.” In March 1965, Moynihan, then 37 and assistant secretary of labor, wrote that “the center of the tangle of pathology” in inner cities — this was five months before the Watts riots — was the fact that 23.6 percent of black children were born to single women, compared with just 3.07 percent of white children. He was accused of racism, blaming the victims, etc.

Forty-nine years later, 41 percent of allAmerican children are born out of wedlock; almost half of all first births are to unmarried women, as are 54 percent and 72 percent of all Hispanic and black births, respectively. Is there anyone not blinkered by ideology or invincibly ignorant of social science who disagrees with this:

The family is the primary transmitter of social capital — the values and character traits that enable people to seize opportunities. Family structure is a primary predictor of an individual’s life chances, and family disintegration is the principal cause of the intergenerational transmission of poverty.

In the 1960s, as the civil rights movement dismantled barriers to opportunity, there began a social regression driven by the explosive growth of the number of children insingle-parent families. This meant a continually renewed cohort of adolescent males from homes without fathers; this produced turbulent neighborhoods and schools where the task of maintaining discipline eclipsed that of instruction.

In the mid-1960s, Moynihan noted something ominous that came to be called “Moynihan’s scissors.” Two lines on a graph crossed, replicating a scissors’ blades. The descending line depicted the decline in the minority — then overwhelmingly black — male unemployment rate. The ascending line depicted the simultaneous rise of new welfare cases.

The broken correlation of improvements in employment and decreased welfare dependency was not just bewildering, it was frightening. Policymakers had long held a serene faith in social salvation through better economic incentives and fewer barriers to individual initiative. The possibility that the decisive factors are not economic but cultural — habits, mores, customs — was dismaying because it is easier for government to alter incentives and remove barriers than to alter culture. The assumption that the condition of the poor must improve as macroeconomic conditions — which government thinks it can manipulate — improve is refuted by the importance of family structure.

To say that poverty can be self-perpetuating is not to say, and Ryan did not say, that poverty is caused by irremediable attributes that are finally the fault of the poor. It is, however, to define the challenge, which is to acculturate those unacquainted with the culture of work to the disciplines and satisfactions of this culture.

Nicholas Eberstadt, an economist and demographer, notes that “labor force participation ratios for men in the prime of life are demonstrably lower in America than in Europe” and “a large part of the jobs problem for American men today is that of not wanting one.” Surely the fact that means-tested entitlement dependency has been destigmatized has something to do with what Eberstadt terms the “unprecedented exit from gainful work by adult men.”

Next March, serious people will be wondering why the problem Moynihan articulated half a century earlier has become so much worse while so much else — including the astonishingly rapid receding of racism and discrimination — has become so much better. One reason is what Moynihan called “the leakage of reality from American life.” Judging by the blend of malice, ignorance and intellectual sloth in the left’s reaction to Ryan’s unexceptionable remarks, the leak has become, among some factions, a cataract.

738 words

Source:Washington post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/george-f-will-the-lefts-half-century-of-denial-over-poverty/2014/03/21/1aeaff4e-b049-11e3-a49e-76adc9210f19_story.html?tid=pm_opinions_pop

TaoRs92

沙发~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~thx~~~


time:1:01.68
A new app can alert you when somebody you don't want to see get close to you.
________________
time:2:04.74
American culture--people should be happy.
The reason--not happy--cause concern.
But we should be happy,not too happy--this is the safest route.
Japanese culture--overly happy--selfish.
_________________
time:1:30.65
The introduction of long-term jobless employment--more than six months.
One view--these workers no longer have big influence on the country's economy.(inflation,labor market)
When economy heats up,employers choose to raise wage,to keep those employees they've already hired,but not reach their hands to those workers who are out of employment more than six months.
So Fed may not help these long-term jobless people change their condition,it's not worth trying.
________________
time:1:04.72
The opinion from a schoolar--short-term has big influence,but long-term's impact can not be determinded no.
K's idea,he agrees that some of the long-term jobless people will never go back to the labor market again.three points:
_____________
time:1:54.93
1 the overall employement rate doesn't affect the inflation.shor-term rate dose.
2 long-term jobless people may not return to work--the discrimination from employers,their own reasons--leave works,lose interests.
3 a better economy may not make the situation better.
Congress will not take cation.Fed is the only hope.If Fed doesn't act,there is no one can help.
________________
time:5:27.94
The introduction of Paul's idea of culture influecne in the persistence of poverty.He thinks that racism and other cultural factors impact the situation of poverty.
The situation of single mother family now--many babies are born to unmarried women.
Family structure is an important factor to affect poverty.
The phenomenon of M's sissors.The broken correlation between improvement of employement and decreased welfare--the idea of the government--not economic reasons,but cutural factors--customs,racim,family structure,etc.
Futher explanation of Paul's idea--poverty is not the poor's fault.But culture makes a big role here.
Compared with Europe,America have more people who just don't want a job--another situation that is related to culture.

xiaofan0205

Thx~~~~~~~

Speaker:
The man wants to find out that who builds neighborhood, and the answer is everybody and nobody. Everybody contributes a small little part and so does web. People started working on changing the underlying rules of the system so that a different shape would start appearing. The shape appears largely because of a kind of a first-mover advantage. If you're the first site there, everybody links to you.

Time2: 1'27"
There is a new app that can uses all those Foursquare check-in and GPS-tagged Instagram photos your friends are pumping out to tell you where they are, which is quite useful in terms of undoing some of the damage you did with all the other social media apps.

Time3: 2'34"
A common view in contemporary Western culture is that personal happiness is one of the most important values in life, but actually, some individuals across cultures are averse to various kinds of happiness for several different reasons.

Time4: 2'15"
Time5: 1'42"
Time6: 2'50"
Long-term unemployed are who have been out of work for 27 weeks or more. Economists and wirters have concluded that the long-term jobless don't matter to the economy, at least when it comes to issues such as inflation and pay growth because they unlikely to ever hold a steady job again. But others don't agree. The three key point of it is: the overall unemployment rate doesn't seem to affect inflation, the long-term unemployed rarely return to work, even a stronger economy might not help their predicament.

Obstacle: 7'05"
Provety is a cultural problem.
A lot more black children were born to single women compared with white children.
Family structure is a primary predictor of an individual's life chances, and family disintergration is the principal cause of the intergenerational transmission of poverty.

菜农人民

Time2 1:39
a new app named Cloak could help you to avoid people who you don't like.The app is based on some other apps which could offer their locations in the map. The app is used.

Time3 2:55
Being happy is a good motion in the West culture.The writer pointed out the significances of happiness in the other cultures which stem from the other regions.

Time4 2:08
There are many people who are employless,but the Department of Labor estimed that with the raise of the economy,people may get jobs,the RF can't help the long-term umployed.

Time5 1:52
FCJY doesn't agree with the theory and he pointed out his own idea, and other economists showed their key points.

Time6 1:20
the employment rate doesn't seem to affect to inflation;the long-term employed rarely turn out to work.Even the strong economy can't help their predicament.

ieveline

谢谢楼主
Speaker
After 911,the street is still alive.
The city is still working.
Dencentrilize the city is make sysyem of city is thriving.
Everybody contributed a little bit to build the neighborhond.
Web acts like city.
Google collects information about what people looking for, acting like an global brain
Everyone contributs a little on the web to others
Speed
1--01:38
A new app cloak can tag the people you want to aviod by receiving alert when they pass within a preset radius.
2--02:42
People in US normally think be happy is importn, and not happy means something is wrong.
But in some society or culture, be happy can be interpreted casted by evil, be selfish, or boring and shallow.
3--02:23
The long-term jobless people are out of job-market for more than 6 months, making them less influence to the country economy.
Now officer are considering whether they should restrict the rising of inflation, doing so may restrict the rising of wages.
4--01:24
The officer Yellen still belive long-term joblesser will be back to job-market someday.
But a document conludes that many of those people may never work and tentatively conclude that they have little influence to the economy.
5--02:30
three key things about long-term unemployed
1.The relationship between unemployed rate to inflation only works when forther take away long-term unemployments.
2.The long-term unemployed raraly return to work.
3.Better ecomonic environment does not help long-term unemployed people to get job easier.
Now congres is not going to help long-term employed,Fed is the only hope.
Obstacle--04:50
Provety is a cultural problem
Unmarried black women have higher possibilies to give birth than white women does.
Even now, most of children born out of wedlock are hispanic or black.
The problem of American umemployment which is different from others is people do not want to work.

jokerking

占一楼~
SPD :  1.11 翘班利器啊~   2.12  古话说得好啊，福兮祸所伏，祸兮福所依~   1.46   1.19   2.07
OB  ： 5.13
R's spoke of poverty incured an acid rain of auucsations just like M once tiptoed into.--what the passed 49 years told us: the family is the primary transmitter of social capital.--since 1960s, there is explosive growth of the number of children single-parent families..-- in mid-1960s, male unemployed rates descended with the new welfare cases rising.-- social salvation is not the case of economic incentives, the decisive factor is family structure.--NE proposed the biggest problem in America is the men are not want to work so lead to poverty.-- the problem M articulated half a century earlier has become so much worse.

小蘑菇开始打怪

首页还在！
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谢谢楼主！！

time:1:03

these days, many social media make people get to know each other, however, Cloak uses maps and photos to remind you someone you do not want to see is around

time3:2:04

in the American culture, being happy is a common notion, however, it is not popular around the world

in many places, people just want to be happy but not too happy because too happy means you are a person who focus on only yourself and eager for success

next time, if other people ask you whether you are happy, tell him the truth

time4:1：54

nowadays in America, many people do not have job is not the result of inflation

the federal reserve may not work as it expected

time5:1:39

in the mind of Y, unemployment is a long-term problem, and she believed that one day the people who have left the labor market will come back

time6:2:47

three key issues about unemployment

1, the government should focus on the long-term solution of the unemployment other than the short-term, because in the short-term, unemployment problem will come back like new

2,many people who leave labor market for a long time will less likely to come back no matter which economy they face

3,if the government could not solve the problem, who will?

time7:5:37

introduce of the theory of R: poverty is a culture problem

more baby are born to black unmarried mother than other single mother

poverty is related to family structure

a large part of men in America and Europe do not have a job because they do not want one

the broken correlation between employment and welfare

今天的话题都是关于就业啊。。然后其实今天读得很水好多都没仔细读下来，罪过真是对不起找阅读的楼主！！

wangweiyi5332

1:44
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5:56