【Native Speaker每日综合训练—34系列】【34-09】文史哲

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Part I: Speaker

To create for the ages, let's combine art and engineering

[Rephrase 1]

[Dialog: 20'12]

Transcript:

Audio:
Source:
http://www.ted.com/talks/bran_ferren_to_create_for_the_ages_let_s_combine_art_and_engineering#t-42685

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Part II: Speed

Russian armoured vehicles moves toward the border with Russia as they leave South Ossetia on Aug. 23, 2008.

Photo by Dmitri Kostyukov/AFP/Getty Images

Obama Is Wrong to Pretend That Putin’s Anti-Western Rhetoric Does Not Have a Wide Echo

Anne Applebaum

[Time 2]
TBILISI, Georgia—Halfway through an otherwise coherent conversation with a Georgian lawyer last week—the topics included judges, the court system, the police—I was startled by a comment he made about his country’s former government, led by ex-president Mikheil Saakashvili. “They were LGBT,” he said, conspiratorially.   

What did that mean, I asked, surprised. Were they in favor of rights for sexual minorities? For gay marriage? Were they actually gay? He couldn’t really define it, though the conversation meandered in that direction for a few more minutes, also touching on the subject of the former president’s alleged marital infidelity, his promotion of female politicians, his lack of respect for the church.

Afterward, I worked it out. The lawyer meant to say that Saakashvili—who drove his country hard in the direction of Europe, who pulled Georgia as close to NATO as possible, who used rough tactics to fight the post-Soviet mafia that dominated his country—was “too Western.” Not conservative enough. Not traditional enough. Too much of a modernizer, a reformer, a European. In the past, such a critic might have called Saakashvili a “rootless cosmopolitan.” But nowadays the insulting code word for that sort of person in the former Soviet space—regardless of what he or she actually thinks about gay people—is “LGBT.”     
[236 words]

[Time 3]
It was an eye-opening moment. Like Ukraine, Georgia is a post-Soviet republic that has tried to pull itself out of the sphere of Russian influence. Unlike Ukraine, Georgia does not have a sizable Russian-speaking population, and Georgians even have cause to fear Russia. Since their 2008 invasion, Russian troops have occupied the Georgian regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, about one-fifth of the country. Russian tanks are parked a few hours drive from Georgia’s capital.

Yet despite the absence of Russian speakers, a form of Russia’s anti-Western ideology can be felt in Georgia, too. It’s a minority view that drifts in through religious leaders—part of the Georgian Orthodox Church retains old ties to Moscow—through some pro-Kremlin political parties and Russian-backed media. But it finds indigenous support, taking the form of xenophobic, anti-European—and nowadays—anti-gay rhetoric. Sometimes it becomes an argument in favor of local oligarchs or economic clans and against foreign investment or rules that would create an even playing field. It always focuses on Western decadence, economic or sexual, and welcomes any sign of Western hesitancy. When President Barack Obama told the world this week that Georgia, which has for a decade been striving with active U.S. encouragement to meet NATO partnership standards, is “not on a path to NATO,” he immediately strengthened that set of arguments in Tbilisi.  

Whether we like it or not, foreign policy choices increasingly have domestic consequences in the post-Soviet world. An alignment with Russia can bring Russian-style corruption and can inspire the rise of Russian-style xenophobia and homophobia, too. An alignment with Europe and NATO has different consequences. With Russian financial and political support, for example, Ukraine’s ousted president, Viktor Yanukovych, was able to rob his country’s coffers and destroy its army and its bureaucracy. If the new Ukrainian government stays on its current path and makes a different set of alliances—with the European Union, the International Monetary Fund, even NATO—it will end up with different domestic economic policies, too.  
[350 words]

[Time 4]
There are implications further afield as well. During his Brussels speech, Obama also declared that Russia leads “no bloc of nations, no global ideology.” This is true up to a point: Russia’s “ideology” isn’t well-defined or clear. But the American president was wrong to imply that the Russian president’s rhetoric, and his annexation of Crimea, has no wider echo. Of course there were the predictable supporters of Russia in the United Nations: Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, North Korea. More interesting are his new European friends. Nigel Farage, the leader of the United Kingdom Independence Party—an anti-European and anti-immigrant party gaining momentum in Britain—declared this week that the EU “has blood on its hands” for negotiating a free-trade agreement in Ukraine. Marine Le Pen, leader of the French far-right National Front, has also said she prefers France to “lean towards Russia” rather than “submit to the United States.” Jobbik, Hungary’s far-right party, sent a representative to the Crimean referendum, and declared it “exemplary.” These are all minority parties, but they are all poised to make gains in European elections later this spring.  

Russia’s ideology may be mishmash: the old Soviet critique of hypocritical “bourgeois democracy,” plus some anti-Europeanism, some anti-globalism and a homophobic twist for contemporary appeal. But let’s not assume that competition between ideas is absurd and old-fashioned. And let’s not pretend that ideologies don’t matter, because, like it or not, they do.     
[266 words]

Source: Slate
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/foreigners/2014/03/ukraine_and_georgia_we_can_t_ignore_the_building_anti_western_sentiment.html

How Do Writers Know What They Want to Write About?

Quora Contributor

This question originally appeared on Quora. Answer by Ellen Vrana, writer, blogger.

[Time 5]
This is the approach I use to generate content and ideas.

I’m an essayist. (Although I prefer “woman of letters”—can we start that?) My writing is less than 5,000 words. I will write longer someday and will use this approach; it’s served me well.


Step 1: Write what you know.

My No. 1 rule.

Write topics you know—Charles Dickens couldn’t have written Jane Austen and Austen couldn’t have written Dickens. They wrote the world and people they each knew. I’m not going to write a book on Peruvian potato farmers, but being a U.S. immigrant in London? You bet. It got easier when I stopped trying to write things I thought I should write (business) and started to write things I could write (self-reflection).

If you want to write about something that you don’t know about, experience it, learn about it, understand it. Then write if it feels right.

Write in the style you know. I’m from the Midwest, and I read a bit and I grew up watching Britcoms. Thus, my style is not-erudite. I insert the occasional intellectual tidbit for fun, and I love irony (highbrow way of saying I’m sarcastic).


Step 2: Read a lot and read aggressively

Read with the intent to learn and to stimulate your creative brain. Mark up the books, circle interesting things, talk out loud. This is not relaxing reading: You want to reread paragraphs 12 times because you were day-dreaming. Let your brain meander.

I have three to four books and jump back and forth. I have a pen, a highlighter, and a notebook. I shut off interactions. I’m introverted so can’t think well when interrupted by someone else. (I can work around others, though.) If you work better in a group or public, do what you need. I wrap in a blanket and make a pot of tea (physical comfort is key, too).

I pick writers whose styles I like, who tell stories that trigger my thoughts, and who teach me new things. Today, I had Pauline Kael, Anthony Trollope, London Times, and Tina Fey’s book open at once. It is chaos. But from that come little ideas and then big ideas.

It takes practice, but if you do it well, it feels like flow.
[403 words]

[Time 6]
Step 3: Write it down, all of it, then make sense.

I read and take gibberish notes. To bring order, I use a notebook that I divide in sections.

In the first section, I write ideas on topics. For example, something caught my attention recently that was a reimagined fairy tale. I’ve always wanted to do a reimagined take on The Metamorphosis. I wrote that down. I brainstormed the idea of becoming mute (I fear I’ll run out of things to say) then asked what effect that would have on others—could they understand me? I wrote this down. Now, it's an idea.

I come back to these things later, rework where they could go, ponder, see if I can take it somewhere. If I can’t, I let it go. (It’s in the notebook, so I can return.)

If I’m on a roll and the story takes shape, I abandon the books, take out my computer, and write the actual piece. I write until my brain runs out of thoughts.

In the second section of the notebook, I write down words and phrases. Today, I wrote down “luminal.” I loved it. And the phrase “shoveling it on,” which I found funny. Perhaps I will couple it with something that is delicate to make it even better. All things I read or heard.

I write down things that fit my content and my style.


Step 4: Solicit and listen to feedback.

Audiences tell you what to write. And guess what, if you’re good at writing about something, you will like writing about that something a lot more.

Quora has been amazing because through my practice blog, The Runcible Goose, I’ve gotten comments and feedback on what I can do and what I cannot.

People ask why anyone would write for free on Quora, and I say, Hell, why do people review for free? Don’t care, they do. And I’m milking it! Super smart (and opinionated) people can offer feedback, so take advantage.


Step 5: Iterate Steps 1–4

I started doing this a bit ago, and I was crap. No thoughts, no ideas, no order, nothing. I can improve a lot in generating, testing, and improving thoughts (and writing, obviously), but I’m better than I was, and I improve the more I practice.

Writing is personal, so find your own way. One thing that is fundamentally true, however, is you have to put yourself in the right mental and physical state to unleash what’s in your brain. To connect with that flow, do whatever it takes and the ideas will suggest themselves to you. Then, just write them down.
[466 words]

Source: Slate
http://www.slate.com/blogs/quora/2014/03/26/how_do_writers_figure_out_what_they_want_to_write_about.html

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Part III: Obstacle

Cahiers du Buffy

Emily Nussbaum

[Paraphrase 7]
A few days ago, the critic Matt Zoller-Seitz wrote a valuable, provocative, and deliciously finger-jabbing manifesto, arguing that TV and film critics concentrate too much on plot and character and theme and don’t write enough about visual craft. This is true. It’s certainly been true at times in my own television criticism, although I could defensively point to counterexamples as well, as one does when jabbed. The challenge Zoller-Seitz sets forth is particularly timely this year, because there’s been an amazing influx of film directors into television—and this cohort has begun, slowly but surely, to warp the medium’s writer-on-top traditions. On shows ranging from Jane Campion’s “Top of the Lake” to Mike White’s “Enlightened” and Brian Fuller’s “Hannibal,” creators have been breaking the rules of what TV is “supposed” to look like.

Here’s Zoller-Seitz’s nut graf:

Form is not just an academic side dish to the main course of content. We critics of film and TV have a duty to help viewers understand how form and and content interact, and how content is expressed through form. The film or TV critic who refuses to write about form in any serious way abdicates that duty, and abets visual illiteracy.

Hello, Cinéasty!

Zoller-Seitz is right, of course: filmed images and editing and music should be described with specificity—leaving them out entirely is wrong. There are a few things that trouble me about his argument, however, and the main one is that Zoller-Seitz, who has reviewed both movies and television, draws no distinction between the two. As annoying as this subject is to discuss—if I get another request to debate “Is TV the New Movies?” I’m going to sweep papers off my desk like a furious lawyer on a CBS procedural—it’s a key question.

Certainly, television has plenty in common with movies: it’s filmed with cameras, it’s performed by actors, and it follows a script. And, as I said, TV shows get more “cinematic,” to use a somewhat hand-waving category, every year. But TV is not movies. It’s an episodic art form. Scripted television shows are often, although not always, produced collaboratively, for a variety of pragmatic reasons—and these pragmatic reasons inflect the artistic results, just as they do in Hollywood film production. (There’s a newer model of solo creation, but that’s no simple thing, either: it can be fantastic, as with “Louie,” or a real problem, as with “Newsroom.” Next season, “True Detective” will be filmed by multiple directors, and I’m curious how that will affect people’s responses to the show.) Andy Greenwald, of Grantland, once summarized these practical issues to me with a simple koan: directors go to movies for art and to TV for money; writers do the opposite. That’s changing, but it’s a historical pattern, and it’s the reason visual craft needs to be understood within television’s unique context.

Television also plays with a distinct set of genres (sitcoms, procedurals, and soap operas among them), each with its own history and set of aesthetic values. But, mostly, TV is long and movies are short; TV takes place over not just hours but seasons and years. A movie can sustain a mood for two hours on exceptional craft, but that’s not the primary approach of most current TV stories and, really, it doesn’t need to be. There’s a reason that television has been so fruitful for writers, creatively, and it’s that episodic, seasonally created stories showcase writers’ strengths: rich characters, long plot arcs, smart dialogue, and thematic complexity. Television nurtures storytelling—to use another annoying modern buzzword. As Teo Bugbee put it the other night on Twitter, “I’m definitely happy to see TV expand as a medium, but I think it’s important to make a distinction btw TV & film, & not to hold one to the other’s standards.”

My response to this issue isn’t entirely abstract and intellectual. Some of it stems from a primal emotional experience, what historians (or, at least, people who used to post to Television Without Pity) might recall as the Great HBO/WB Schism of 1999. That was a year when I was not yet a professional TV critic, just a woman, standing in front of a television show, begging everyone to love it. Every week, I watched “The Sopranos” and “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”; I was an avid fan of both, convinced that David Chase and Joss Whedon were turning television into something radical and groundbreaking, the former by deconstructing the mob genre (as well as capitalism and psychotherapy), the latter by forging a mythic, feminist-inflected meld of horror, comedy, and teen drama. Yet only one of the shows was being written about, seemingly on a near-daily basis, by the Times. At cocktail parties, I spent a lot of time evangelizing for “Buffy,” jabbing my own finger. Mysteriously, many of my targets were resistant, even when ranted at by a woman holding a vodka gimlet.

In part, this was because “Buffy The Vampire Slayer” had a silly name; in part, it was because it aired on the miniature “netlet” called the WB, and because it starred a teen-aged girl and featured vampires. But a significant element of the disdain stemmed from how the show looked, which was in no way Scorcesesque or Fellinian. The werewolf costume looked like it was my great-aunt Ida’s coat. The dialogue was conducted in tennis-match closeups; the stuntwoman’s Buffy wig shook over her eyes when she kicked; there was a notable lack of mise-en-scène. You could argue that this was a choice, or an homage to seventies horror schlock (as is certainly true in, say, “American Horror Story”), but, realistically, “Buffy” ’s low-key charm had far more to do with its budget and the writer-centric tradition in which it was produced. Visually, “Buffy” got more ambitious in later seasons, with gorgeous episodes like the silent “Hush,” directed by Whedon, which featured floating villains inspired by “Nosferatu,” “Hellraiser,” and Mr. Burns from “The Simpsons.” But in early installments the show used directors for hire, not auteurs or big names. It didn’t look like what my cocktail buddies thought of as worthy TV. Damn them all to hell!

This false hierarchy has continued to be a problem: shows that look fantastic, like “House of Cards,” get unearned prestige, even when they’re empty suits. Shows made on a budget, or collaboratively, or on off-brand channels, or on channels for teen-agers, get the side eye. Far too often, people conflate looks with class. For example, there’s a foolish assumption that “Modern Family”—a network sitcom about a well-off family, filmed in the mockumentary style of “The Office,” with a single-cam looseness and confessional closeups—is sophisticated, while “The Middle” (also a single-cam show, but with harsh musical stings and more linear editing, more closely resembling older sitcoms) is dumber and simpler. As “30 Rock” ’s Liz Lemon would say, “Opposite!” “The Middle” is the better, smarter, more original show. This conflation of economic class and TV genre, and visual sophistication and over-all worthiness, is an ongoing problem in television criticism, and while it is important for critics—as Zoller-Seitz suggests—to raise our game in describing how a show looks and sounds (and how it is made to sound and look that way), it’s also important not to fall into the adjacent trap: to mistake beauty for substance or, really, for anything other than beauty.

(There’s also reality television, of course, which has been shoved, hierarchically, beneath even sitcoms, and which has its own highly distinct and theatrical visual tradition—but that’s a post for another day!)

Naturally, this is never going to be an issue upon which all critics agree—that’s the whole fun of criticism. Inside my own magazine’s Web site, there lurks my friendly nemesis, Richard Brody, a film critic whose auteurism is so inflamed that he has told me, on several occasions, that images from television shows cause his eyes to vomit. To me, Brody’s auteurism feels more like a sort of religion: he believes he can judge a television show after five minutes, based on his sensitivity to its craftsmanship, a kind of princess-and-the-pea theory of television aesthetics. I’m an unbeliever, understandably, having spent time in spiritual communion with some of the less distinguished Season 1 episodes of Buffy; my conversion point was “The Pack,” which I’m happy to argue about any day. Episodes like that one, and the anonymous commenters at the now tragically defunct Television Without Pity, were my main entrance ramp to engaged arts criticism—not movies, and not filmmaking, and not Andrew Sarris or Cahiers du Cinéma or even Pauline Kael. Yet it’s clear that, each day, the TV map gets recalculated. More knowledge is always better, and I accept the Zoller-Seitz challenge—and promise to read any cinema-studies book he assigns to me. I hope he’ll also accept mine: a Xander-versus-Harmony slap fight, filmed from a crane five hundred feet high, in slo-mo and 3-D, through a Super Baltar lens.
[1661 words]

Source: The New Yorker
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/culture/2014/03/cahiers-du-buffy-tv-criticism-versus-film-criticism.html

xiaofan0205

今天好晚~~~谢谢兔兔

Speaker:
From the man's own experience, he knows that, contrary to what people being told in school, the worlds of art and design were not incompatible with science and engineering. When combined, you could create things that were amazing that couldn't be done in either domain alone. He believe that the ingredients for the next Pantheons are all around us, just waiting for visionary people with the broad knowledge, multidisciplinary skills, and intense passion to harness them to make their dreams a reality.

Time2: 1'51"
Time3: 2'27"
Time4: 1'40"
Nowadays, the insulting code word for a person who is not conservative enough, not traditional enough is LGBT
Although Georgia is a post-Soviet republic that has tried to pull itself out of the sphere of Russian influence, a form of Russia's anti-Western ideology can be felt in Georgia. Foreign policy choices increasingly have domestic consequences in the post-Soviet World.
Russia's ideology may be mishmash, but they do have ideologies and they important.

Time5: 2'26"
Time6: 2'02"
How do writers know what they want to write about? The author give us five step: write what you know, read a lot and read aggressively, wirte it down and then make sense, solicit and listen to feedback, iterate step 1-4. In the end, the author suggests that writing is personal, so find your own way.

clairellnnxx

thx a lot ！
speaker:
The speaker talked about his identification of the relationship between science and art.
time2:1‘39’‘
the lawyer form Georgian called the former government LGBT. He also talked about his former president Mikheil.People criticized him for being rootless cosmopolitan, for pushing tings so modernlized that ignored the traditional and religious things.

time3: 1'46''
Georgian has been fear of Russia after post-Soviet, and they dont have a russian speaking population.
a form of Russia’s anti-Western ideology can be felt in Georgia.foreign policy choices increasingly have domestic consequences in the post-Soviet world.

time4:2'02''
Russia's ideology may be not clear and well-defined, but it does have echo.

time5:2'06''
the approach to generate content and idea:
1.write what you know
2.read a lot and read aggressively
time6:2.09
3.write ideas down and make sense of them
4.solicit and listen to feedback
5.repeat the aboved steps

ob:6'54''

raesiki

啊。。今天头超痛。。。为了不生疏简单练习一下。。

Time 2- 1’11
The short paragraph explained how ‘LGBT’ is used in west-russian issues, and this phrase is used to refer the Russian people.

Time 3 - 2’39...脑子不进词啊
The three paragraphs showed that the foreign policies are increasingly important for post-soviet counties nowadays. An example of Geogoria has been given to prove the viewpoint.

Time 4- 1’07
This part mainly explained why it is wrong for Obama to say the Russian rhetoric is hardly influential worldwide. By citing some counties such as Venezuela, Hungary , North Korea and so on, the author try to argue that the influence of Putin’s words exists and could not be ignored

Time 5&6 - 2’20
Five steps to knowing what you want to write as a writer
Write what you know
Reading a lot and extensively
Write down what you thought
Solicit and take feedback
Redo 1 to 4 steps
Enjoy your journey of writing and make it a flow experience!

Time 7 - 没读完。。等身体好些再来写
The main topic addressed here is about criticizing TV and in order to do it, the article has firstly compare and contrast the TV and Film for us.

sherlock1992

1'28''
2'24''
1'44''
2'39''
2'18''

菜农人民

Time 2 1:37
something about the reform...

Time3 2:44
unlike Ukraine, Georgia has been out of the influence of Russia.Gut Georgians have cause to fear Russia,because Russians have invaded it.G also has  anti-Western idology. The foreign policy from Russia or NATO may have domestic consquences in G.

Time4  2:03
Russian president has his own ideology. Some leaders of wersten parties who are anti-European and anti-immigrant- want to learn towards Russia.

Time5 2:03
step 1 learn and know what you want to write.
step 2 read a lot of books aggressively

Time6 1:45
step3 write it down and make sense,you could write your thoughts and topics then you coule write down words and phrase as your style
step4 Solicit and listen to feedback, listen to others what they want to write and think it.
step5 repeat step 1-4

Obstacle 6:04
读得云里雾里的·····= =

疏离无罪

首页，，。。。。。。。

Speaker: The speaker was born in an artist family,but he is interested in science.His father once told him that art is not about being decorative,but is a different way of communicating idea and bridge the world of knowledge.The visit to Patheon let the speaker find out the charm of the combination of art and science.This miracle building shows its special design and art.The combination of art and science can creat sth amazing.But in school,no teacher teaches this,art and science are separate.Then the speaker discussed about the next patheon.He thought that the internet is not patheon,instead it is the concrete of patheon.The next patheon may be automous vehicles.Since most of our cites and countires are linkeby transportaions and roads.The new vehicles can reconstructe our life.It can solve many current problems.Next patheon is all around us.We need to find them.And we also need to teach our kids about this.

01:23
The former government of Georgia and ex-president are descirbed as LGBT to show that they are pro-western.
Many behaviors are raised to show this.

02:03
Georgia wants to pull itself out of the Russian influence.But the country also fears Russia's military force.Thera are also pro-Russia group,but they are just little group of people.Foreign policy choices are having domestic consequences in the post-Soviet world now.

01:42
The ideology of Russia is not clear.But the President Obama underestimared Russia's annexation on Crimea.Though the US wants to have sancation on Russia,there are many supporters if Russia in the UN and Europe.

01:23
Advices to generate contents and ideas: 1 Write what you know. 2 Read a lot and read aggressively. Read with the intent to learn and stimulate your creative brain.This process need to practice.

01:39
3 Wirte down all you have thought and choose sth fit yourself best 4 listen to feedbacks and revise your content 5 repeat step 1-4   Everyone has their own style,try to find a method that fit you best.

08:21
Main Idea: the problem in television criticism
TV critics used to put too much on plot,character and theme,and not enough on visual craft.And now many film directors come into TV field,which brings many changes to television programs also to critcs.Z's idea is that The form and the content of an television should be combined well.And he thought film and television has no difference.
But the author does not agree.He thought TV get more ciinematic nad more visual craft in tv context should be understood.And TV is much longer than film,so tv is fruitful for writers.
后面 完全读不下去了。。这方面的东西完全不知道在讲什么。。。

MAGGIEHE1993

占~~~~~~~~~~谢谢楼主~~~~~~就是一看政治文脑子就放空啊求拯救。。。。。。。
-------------------------------------------
Speaker: The speaker said that art, design and engineering shouldn't be separated from each other but they should be
         combined in order to create a better world. 是因为太久没有练听力了么20分钟完全不知道这老头在曰什么

time2: 1min 30"
time3: 2min 39"
time4: 2min 04"
time5: 2min 36"
       The writer talked about approaches she used to generate content and ideas. Step one is to write what you know and
       step two is to read a lot and read aggressively.

time6: 2min 45"
       Step three is to write down ideas that you get in reading and make sense of them. Step four is to solicit and listen
       to feedback. Step five is to inerate steps one to four.

Obstacle:
       A critic argued tht TV and film critics concentrate too much on plot and character and theme and don't write enough about       visual draft. The author agrees with this critic. But there are a few things that trouble the author about the critic's
       argument. The main one is that the critic draws no distinction between the two. Certainly TV has plenty in common with
       movies. But it also plays with a distinct set of genres, which make it different from movie. Then the author presented his
       own view.