【速度】+【越障练习】GMAT得阅读者得天下，大家一起来练阅读吧

kluivert

自己读得懂，但翻译就很为难了...文法很重要

kluivert

个人觉得google翻译有点问题

Fannie and Freddie also hope to regain credibility by portraying themselves as buyers of last resort in the subprime market, as private lenders belatedly tighten standards and investors run from toxic mortgage backed debt.
房利美和房地美也希望通过将自己描绘成次级抵押贷款市场的最后的清理工（希望 )而重新获得信誉，因为私人借贷姗姗来迟地收紧标准，而投资者躲避由债务支撑的不良抵押。

进击的智人阿飞

kluivert 发表于 2018-10-1 04:07
个人觉得google翻译有点问题

Fannie and Freddie also hope to regain credibility by portraying themsel ...

感谢指正啦~

进击的智人阿飞

kluivert 发表于 2018-10-1 04:07
个人觉得google翻译有点问题

Fannie and Freddie also hope to regain credibility by portraying themsel ...

感谢指正啦~

kluivert

进击的智人阿飞 发表于 2018-10-1 09:22
感谢指正啦~

不好意思 ，只是菜鸟的个人理解    buyers  of last resort 理解可能不太确切

请多多指正

进击的智人阿飞

【越障1-14】  来源： the Economist 2012.09.08Female muscle    Now is not a good time to be a man (909 words)

MEN today arehaunted by the “spectre of a coming gender apocalypse”, Hanna Rosin declares inher new book, “The End of Men”. How worried should they be? It is true thatwomen are contributing more than ever to household income. They dominateuniversity attendance around the world. In South Korea more women than men passthe foreign-service exam, which has sparked the foreign ministry to implement aminimum quota for men. In Brazil nearly a third of women earn more than theirhusbands, a phenomenon that has caused men to form church support-groupscalling themselves “Men of Tears”.

Ms Rosin, aneditor at Atlantic, whose book grew out of an article she wrote for themagazine in 2010, acknowledges that men are not about to become extinct anytime soon. But women today are excelling, while men founder. As part of herresearch, Ms Rosin travelled to many corners of America, among themAuburn-Opelika, Alabama, where women’s median income is 40% higher than men’s,and men are encouraged to watch virtual simulations to teach them how to getjobs.

The financial crisis has beenespecially unkind to men: three-quarters of the 7.5m American jobs lost in therecession belonged to men and were in traditionally masculine industries, suchas construction, manufacturing and finance. Manufacturing’s flight from Americaand the evolution of technology in the workplace have left many men jobless—andoften despondent. The book is filled with anecdotes from those who are tryingto make sense of what has happened to them. “Probably no one has had their wifemove up the ladder as far as I’ve moved down,” says one man. Another, who isannoyed that his girlfriend earns more than he does, complains, “All the thingswe need to be good at to thrive in the world…are things that my female friendsand competitors are better at than me.”

The argument Ms Rosin putsforward does not spell out the end of men so much as the deterioration of theircondition. The new service-based economy rewards communication and adaptation,qualities that women are more likely to have. Only about 3% of men have takenover raising children full-time while their wives support their families. Instead,many men, especially young ones, have retreated into a world of video games,drinking and prolonged adolescence—a phenomenon iden tified in “Guyland”, a2008 book by an American sociologist, Michael Kimmel.

But what happensto men has great consequences for women, and vice versa. Many poorer women whoare not well educated are forgoing marriage, believing that a man is simply adrag and an additional mouth to feed, Ms Rosin argues. Educated, wealthierwomen, on the other hand, are experiencing more fulfilling relationships inwhich they share responsibilities with partners as each takes up slack atdifferent times. She calls these “seesaw marriages”. One result of women’s riseis that men have more retirement income, better health and happier marriages.

Hard as Ms Rosin tries toargue that the world has embraced “matriarchy”, however, the data does notsupport her thesis. Only 3% of Fortune 500 bosses are women, as are only20 of the world’s 180 heads of state. She dismisses evidence that suggests herbook is inappropriately titled: “Men have been in charge for about 40,000years, and women have started edging them out for about 40. So of course thereare still obstacles at the top.” She also eschews a more nuanced approach bylet ting what is mostly an argument about American gender trends strive to beglobal. For example, she mentions that women own more than 40% of privatebusinesses in China, and that in many countries parents prefer having adaughter. But nowhere does she acknowledge that aborting female fetuses remainsa huge problem in China and India.

“The End of Men”is notable, however, for what it says about America’s thinking on women today.In another provocative article in the Atlantic, “Why Women Still Can’tHave It All”, Anne-Marie Slaughter argued that women are deluded if they thinkthat they can have a high-flying career and a family without something givingway. Ms Slaughter used to be a senior official in the State Department, a jobshe recently gave up in order to spend more time with her children and returnto academia. A high-powered job can be compatible with child-rearing only if awoman is wealthy, has a job with flexible hours or works for herself.

Ms Rosin also argues forgreater flexibility in the workplace, but ultimately takes a more bullish linethan Ms Slaughter about women’s ability to change their workplaces to suittheir needs. Both young men and women of the millennial generation want moreflexible work hours and see the value of working remotely. And they will seekout employers who try hard to make better work-life balance a reality.

This is not thefirst recession that has triggered a crisis of masculinity in America. Afterthe recession in the early 1990s, Susan Faludi wrote “Stiffed: The Betrayal ofthe American Man”, which lamented that men were underworked, underachieving andundersupported. This time the story is somewhat different. Had Ms Rosin put offwriting her book for a few years, she would probably have seen women’s jobs gothe way of men’s. The economic dislocations that have erupted in male-dominatedindustries, such as construction and finance, are making their way intoindustries dominated by women, as governments cut back on services, teachingstaff and the like. The real story about men and women is about how thiseconomic crisis will harm both genders, and future generations.

进击的智人阿飞

【速度1-14】 来源 https://modelviewculture.com/pieces/diversity-in-tech-remains-elusive-due-to-racism-lack-of-representation-and-cultural-differences
发现这个网站上很多专栏文章都是关于一个社会事件的，文法不是很难，今天试一下用来练速怎么样


计时1 （303 words）
Diversity in Tech RemainsElusive Due to Racism, Lack of Representation and Cultural Differences

Although Black and Latinostudents earn about 20% of computer science degrees, they make up only 9% ofthe tech industry and a dismal 1% of tech company founders, according to LauraWeidman Powers in a USA TODAY article publishedfor Black History Month early this year.

“The inferiority complex isinherent, like you can’t get rid of that feeling especially when you see no oneelse like you. Even if no one openly comes up to you and says you don’t belonghere, you can see that you don’t, not that you don’t belong, but that there’sno one else like you there,” explained Syracuse University alumnus BrittanyMoore.

Although Black and Latinostudents earn about 20% of computer science degrees, they make up only 9% ofthe tech industry and a dismal 1% of tech company founders, according to LauraWeidman Powers in a USA TODAY article publishedfor Black History Month early this year.

“The inferiority complex isinherent, like you can’t get rid of that feeling especially when you see no oneelse like you. Even if no one openly comes up to you and says you don’t belonghere, you can see that you don’t, not that you don’t belong, but that there’sno one else like you there,” explained Syracuse University alumnus BrittanyMoore.

Today Moore is a ClientTechnical Specialist for IBM, but her experience as the only African Americanand only woman Communication and Information Management double major in hersenior-level Advanced Computer Networking class in 2014, revealed the sadreality about her beloved field: It still lacks diversity despite years ofefforts by professionals of color, organizations and initiatives to increasethe number of women and minorities in the industry.

计时2 （267 words）

One such organization isSugarGamers. Keisha Howard founded SugarGamers in 2009, originally as awomen-oriented gaming community and tech advocacy group. Today, seven yearslater, it is open to all as a technology advocacy organization that focuses ondiversifying the gaming industry and uplifting women in the space. “I think that the shift has happened. Theconversation [about diversity] has become so prevalent on social media, withsocial media becoming so popular and everybody using it, everybody can be vocalabout what the problems are, but the solutions are a little bit more complex,”she said.

Hailing from Chicago, Howard has over 14 years of experience inthe real estate industry, and blames lack of representation of people and womenof color in technology as a reason she didn’t pursue those opportunitiesearlier in life: “Sometimes Iwonder when I was younger, if I had seen myself represented in the tech field,maybe the thought would have occurred to me much sooner that I could have aplace in the tech industry.”

According to 2016 governmentfiles, an overwhelming 88 ofthe 107 executives at Apple are white men. Only 20 executives are women. 14 ofthe executives are Asian, while only five are members from underrepresentedminority groups. The numbers for 2015 were similar. At Microsoft, the number of women in the companydropped for the second year straight, and the number of Black and Latinoemployees increased only slightly from last year. Recode published data aboutthe demographics of the two companies in an article aboutthe slow goings of diversity in technology last month.

计时3（ 266 words)

“If you’re an educated Blackmale or educated Hispanic, it’s a little bit harder for you because they’drather nibble off of your knowledge than put you in the right position,” saidApple employee Brandon Gilbert. “I feel like that’s why diversity in tech isvery awkward.”

Gilbert is a Retail Specialistin the largest Apple retail store on the West Coast. He has worked for Applefor five years but has not been allowed to reach his full potential in thecompany due to what he sees as a cultural and generational gap. “I was tryingto be a leader at Apple, but they kept compressing me for some reason. Now Idon’t even go for it anymore, and it’s very awkward because I’m sitting in aroom full of white dudes who don’t have a way of elevating themselves withoutmy knowledge.”

The disk jockey and Lyft driverby night explained that since the passing of innovator Steve Jobs, oldergentlemen at Apple don’t really know what’s going to happen next withtechnology. Gilbert also understands why Black men specifically have beenleaving tech and have a lower retention rate in tech companies: “Unless youhave the patience to ride the wave, you’re going to end up ejecting yourselffrom it so you can figure out your own destiny, because you see it within thefirst two years in the tech world that you’re just being consumed as a pillarof knowledge instead of a pillar of greatness. They’re only using yourknowledge and not your arms, legs, hands. They only want your brain.”

计时4 （309 words)

Both Moore and Howard agreethat inherent racism is the root cause of the problem and reason why hiringdisparities in tech companies are so wide. “Myfriend doesn’t work on the tech side, but she works at Google,” said Moore.“And Google has this Black group or club for like meetings and things like thatand this Hispanic guy got up and said ‘When I’m in the micro kitchens, randomwhite people come up to me and say, ‘Hey can you refill the apples?’ or ‘Heywe’re out of oranges,’ automatically thinking I’m the janitorial staff.’”

This is an example of themicroaggressions and stereotypes that professionals of color in all industriesare liable to experience, but in the tech sphere, white homogenous friendgroups, networks, and limited understanding, interaction, and value of Blackand Brown people results in racially discriminatory hiring practices andcultural misunderstandings.

“Racism starts with themanagement because they didn’t hang around enough Black people, or around enoughHispanics, or around enough Asians to understand the mannerisms of a certainindividual,” said Gilbert, who is currently in school studying applicationdevelopment.

As a self-proclaimed Black“nerd” and active social media user, Moore also cites cultural differences asone of the main reasons tech companies don’t hire more people fromunderrepresented minorities groups. She herself remembers laughing awkwardlyalongside white college peers and classmates to jokes she didn’t necessarilyfind funny due to cultural differences in social cues and communicationsstyles: “If you weren’t friends with a Black woman in your class partly becausethere were no Black women in your class or partly because your interests, maybeher interests aren’t the same, if you’re not even friends with those people,you’re definitely not going to start a business with those people. You’re notgoing to think about those people when you’re creating your technology.”

计时5 （305 words）

The differences Moorereferenced come into play in daily work-life situations that – regardless ofintentions – embrace harmful and racist stereotypes. “If anything, it made mework harder because I felt like I was behind or felt I had something to prove,”said Moore. “I ended up getting an A in that class and doing better than thewhite males next to me who have all this experience and are geeky and techy. Imean I think there’s definitely that stereotype, but once you get into thetechnology itself, that’s what I really do love and enjoy learning about.”

There is hope: Mentoring andrepresentation of women and people of color in executive-level positions arewhat Moore says her company is doing right. Moore can’t even count on two handsthe number of co-workers of color she has, although she is still the only Blackwoman on her department team. Howard, who now specializes in digital marketingstrategy and community management, advocates for diversity not for socialimpact, but because it’s a smart business practice: “When you have a lot ofdifferent perspectives with different experiences from different walks of life,you’re able to take from that and make a universally appealing product. And atthe end of the day, that’s fiscally responsible because you want to sellwhatever you’re selling to as many people as possible.”

There is also hope in the factthat Black millennials continue to dominate the internet, social media, and itsnew marketing and entrepreneurial spaces, as evidenced by this 2016 Nielsen data report. Moore and Howard both intend to throw theirhats into the ring one day, following suit with the 1.3 million other Blackwomen currently in control of their own companies in the U.S.

Let’s hope that even if theindustry doesn’t give them a chance, we do.

进击的智人阿飞

【速度1-13】  
计时

+5行， +3行， +3行， +3行， +5行  变得龟速了。。。要记意思果然会慢，我会更快的！！！

大意： part I ： it is about American's changing attitudes to women in politics area. Background is , after the nomination of hillary Clitton, more women start to take part in politics. Mostof them work in democratic party. Some of them are encouraged by feminist movements while others do so because they are unsaatisfied with Trump. Then , some studies are conducted to survey both men and women's opinion on women's participating rate in government; descrimination on women in Givernment office; women's advantage over men in poitics and gender equality. The results vary with age groups and gender group.  Many people support women's paticipation by showing the data of women's proportion in population and in House's seats. They think life will be better if more women can work in governmnet .

Part II : It is about a country which minght change its name.  M country is going to conduct a referendum on whether or not to change its name from Republic M to North M. The president refute the change and also the referendum. He thinks if the country changes its name, it will seem to be a supplement of Greece and lose its independence and he took referendum as a threat to country's sovereignty. The supporters of the change think they can claim more recognition from UN and thus can join in NATO. Greece supports the change. But it's initiative is doubtful. decades ago, M is independent from Greece and then in the following years, Greece disrupt its participation in international society.

Part III

Nobel prize this year is not awarded but the Swedish academy invented a new academic prize for literature.

Different from Nobel prize, the new prize will not keep its nominators secret but instead show the nominating list and process to public.

The Nobel prize is not awarded this year because one of the members' husband is involved in a sexual assult trial. This man and the member runs a organization working for Swedish Academy. This man is also suspected to releash the winners name before the declaration. But this member is not dismissed from the academy. Thus, many members leave to show their anger.

进击的智人阿飞

【越障1-14】  计时 8min 58 s
主旨： 一个女作家写了一本关于当代女性崛起的书，然而书中的观点与事实并不十分相符。
结构： 一个女强的时代背景，女强男弱的原因， 女强的好处，与现实的矛盾，另外一本更符合实际的书
大意：引入了一些调查，发现在大学入学率，收入，工资增长率，入职率 等多个方面，女性都超越了或正在超越男性。 书的作者例举了几个原因：
1. 由于经济危机，很多男性主导的产业，比如航空，制造业，都在衰退，会有大量男性被裁掉 2. 科技进步，首先被高科技改造或者替换的也是这些男性主导产业
3. 现在一些工作需要的沟通等品质，是女性做的更好的。 一句文中的话做结：男性发现，很多自己擅长的方面，女性却还要做的更好。
但目前全世界只有3%的夫妻是男性带孩儿，女性赚钱的。 作者认为应该有更多这样的家庭。观察发现，没受过好的教育的女性，只能在家带孩，此时丈夫对她们来说，也只是多了一口嘴吃饭；相比之下女强人则会更看重夫妻关系，这利于夫妻感情，家庭幸福，处于这种关系下的男性实际也会更幸福，更健康。现在主流趋势也是支持女性统领社会的。
然而本文作者却认为，书的女作者夸大了女强效应。首先数据表明，不管是从福布斯500还是世界国家领导人，女性的占比都只有百分之几。这个不难解释：男性统治社会了4千年，而女性刚刚崛起40年，后者当然不能盖过前者。 作者认为，该女性作家出现错误的原因，是她把美国的一些看问题的角度，附加到每个国家上，看不全面。比如她说中国父母更喜欢女儿，但她却没看到被抛弃的女性胎儿。
作者认为另一个作家的文章更贴切：主要讲一个女性高职人员为了平衡家庭而辞掉工作，文章提出（也是作者支持的），女性能够平衡家庭和工作的唯一方式，是她必须富裕，且做的工作时间灵活，足够自由，不是为别人打工。
作者同时提出，自由的工作时间是当今男女性共同关注的问题。他也认为，经济危机引起的行业衰退，不只会影响男性，也会影响女性。

进击的智人阿飞

【越障1-15】

Local Political Uncertainty, Family Control, andInvestment Behavior

An influential strand of research has investigatedthe implications of political uncertainty for macroeconomic outcomes such ascapital flows, investment, and gross domestic product (e.g., Alesina andPerotti (1996), Baker and Bloom (2013), Barro (1991), and Hermes and Lensink(2001)). Building on the idea that uncertainty increases the option value ofwaiting and thus makes companies more cautious in their investment behavior(e.g., Bernanke (1983), Bloom, Bond, and Van Reenen (2007)), scholars aredirecting their attention to the relationship between aggregate uncertainty andfirm-level outcomes (e.g., Baker, Bloom, and Davis (2016), Guiso and Parigi(1999), Gulen and Ion (2016), and Pastor and Veronesi (2013)).1

Recent works in this research domain (e.g., Jens(2017), Julio and Yook (2012), (2016)) focus on political elections as aspecific driver of uncertainty and show that firms exhibit a significantdecline in fixed investment during election periods, especially when theyoperate in less stable countries and carry out activities more connected withthe public sector. Despite this rich evidence, the governance characteristicsthat immunize companies against political risk remain largely unexplored. Wecontribute to this literature by studying how family ownership affectsinvestment behavior during periods of local political uncertainty. Due to theirprevalence around the world (e.g., Faccio and Lang (2002), Morck, Wolfenzon,and Yeung (2005)), family firms have received wide attention recently. Thescholarly debate on this topic has been characterized by a tension between thenegatives and positives of family ownership, ranging from the risk of nepotismand entrenchment to the benefits of specialized assets and congruence betweenownership and control. We believe that focusing on family firms may bring novelinsights to the debate on corporate investment and political uncertainty. Inparticular, our thesis is that family ownership can provide significant agency-and resource-based advantages that help the company overcome investment inertiain periods of heightened uncertainty. From an agency perspective, it has beenlong noted that family firms tend to benefit from longer investment horizons andbetter alignments between owners’ and executives’ investment preferences (e.g.,Anderson and Reeb (2003), Hsu, Huang, Massa, and Zhang (2015), and Villalongaand Amit (2010)). Building on these arguments, we posit that having investmentpreferences consistently aligned toward the long run can alleviate problems ofmanagerial myopia during uncertain times, thus making family firms better ablethan their nonfamily counterparts to weather time-contingent politicaluncertainty.

From a resource perspective, family firms have beenshown to possess a superior ability to deal with the political system, whicharises from their extensive network of family and business relationships(Bunkanwanicha, Fan, and Wiwattanakantang (2013), Faccio and Parsley (2009),and Fisman (2001)) and their credibility in sustaining implicit contractingwith politicians (Bertrand and Schoar 2006). These features can be valuable inovercoming political uncertainty. Indeed, existing works have argued that politicalcapital brings about preferential political treatment (e.g., Goldman, Rocholl,and So (2013), Faccio, Masulis, and McConnell (2006)) and alleviates thenegative effects of political uncertainty by giving firms more information onthe legislative process (Ovtchinnikov, Reza, and Wu (2015), Wellman (2017)).2Taken together, these results provide further suggestion that the investmentbehavior of family firms should be more resilient than that of nonfamily firmsin times of heightened political uncertainty. We conduct the analysis on a richdata set from Italy that comprises 12,459 firms spanning from 2000 to 2014.Going beyond existing works on national elections, our analysis focuses on theelection of local governments (at the regional level), which activelycontribute to some of the most important areas of public spending (e.g., healthcare and local policies) with significant implications for firm activities.Local politics indeed represents a major arena of interactions betweenbusinesses and politicians (e.g., Amore and Bennedsen (2013), Cingano andPinotti (2013)), especially for the myriad of small and medium-sized firms withgeographically concentrated operations. Our empirical approach has severaladvantages. First, we can exploit that regions do not all hold elections in thesame year; this staggered election scheduling allows us to build a difference-in-differencesmodel in which firms in nonelection regions serve as counterfactuals to firmsin regions that are holding regional elections. Second, we benefit from thetiming of elections being mostly fixed and exogenous to current firm outcomes.Third, by exploring variations in investment across firms with differentownership structures within regions, we reduce the concern that our results arecontaminated by business-cycle conditions, which should be common to allcompanies in a given region. Fourth, by focusing the analysis on a singlecountry, we mitigate the concerns about omitted-factor bias that typicallyarise in cross-country regressions (e.g., due to differences in politicalinstitutions, legal systems, and/or types and levels of regulation).

We start by documenting two key results. Althoughregional election years induce on average a significant reduction in investment(amounting to 25% in our baseline specification), family firms revert thisinvestment decline and experience a negligible change in investment. In otherwords, family firms appear better able to maintain their investment activityduring local elections. Importantly, these findings hold when controlling foran extensive host of variables related to corporate characteristics, macroeconomicperformance, aggregate policy uncertainty, leading economic indicators, andsentiment. We proceed to show that local political uncertainty induces a muchlarger decline in the investment of firms operating in industries closelyaligned with the public sector and thus more intimately linked to politics(e.g., due to public procurement contracts or regulatory actions). For firmsoperating in such industries, regional elections induce a relevant decline ininvestment. Yet, consistent with our main results, we find that family firmsare able to neutralize this effect. As expected, we also find that our resultsare more pronounced for firms that have a more local scope of operations. Next,we document economically greater investment during election years, as comparedwith that of nonfamily firms, for family businesses in which the family membersare widely represented in board and top-executive positions. This resultreinforces our intuition that family control mitigates the reluctance to investduring periods of election-specific uncertainty by improving agency alignmentin investment decisions and extending the company’s investment horizon.